Even this year lockdown has been reimposed during the wedding season. Indians love hosting and attending weddings – overflowing with fanfare, feeding the bride’s heroine complex, a wild circus of prestige and enough flair to make The Great Gatsby parties hang its head in shame. Even though virtual weddings lack the sensory overload characteristic of Indian weddings, many businesses have sought to replace all the wedding rituals with virtual alternatives.
In 2020, after people realised that the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight, the 40 – 50 billion dollar wedding industry was under grave threat. While many couples cancelled or postponed their weddings, others resorted to the ‘virtual’ ceremony.
Informing the new guidelines on marriage ceremonies by the Governement of Karnataka District Commissioner of Dakshina Kannada Dr. Rajendra K. V. told News Karnataka the weddings that are already scheduled can be held in their respective residences with a maximum of 25 people.
This led to the downsizing of guest lists and finding new ways to include family in this intimate internet affair. Online matrimonial platforms are now launching websites like ‘Weddings from Home’ to help couples plan their virtual weddings independently. The website mentions all the resources needed, including an exhaustive list of vendors and partners for photoshoots, sangeet and pheras.
The website facilitates the sharing of customised e-invites, virtual training on make-up and clothing for the bride, mehendi lessons for family members by trained artistes and a pandit to conduct a real phera. Some choose to have immediate family around them and others attend online. But to have more than 100 guests on Zoom, one has to pay Rs 3,791 for the month. This amount is, of course, minuscule when compared to the money spent by Indian families on grandeur wedding setups.
But whether zoom weddings can replace Indian wedding festivities is still unknown. Many wedding enthusiasts suggest that even after the pandemic, weddings will be both offline and live-streamed. This will help everyone important to attend even if they cannot endure the hassles of attending weddings. Zoom weddings have become the middle ground for the previously polar opposites – tradition and technology. Will this match last forever in sickness and in health? Only time will tell.
Image courtesy IANS