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New Delhi: Tourists can now purchase tickets to attend Indian weddings through the Join My Wedding platform which provides access to weddings in India as part of the trend to sell experiences, the New York Times (NYT) said in a report. The platform allows interested customers to attend one day of the wedding ceremony for $150 while for two or more days, the fee is $250. As part of their business, they contribute the majority of the fee to the couple and charge only a commission fee.
The platform, which was founded by Orsi Parkanyi, is often promoted as “the Airbnb of weddings”. As per the NYT report, Parkanyi said, “Every cultural element is right there at a wedding…If I had just one day in any country in the world, I would want to just go to a wedding.” The website had more than 1,200 last month for the tourists to visit and about 400 bookings have been registered through the platform, she added.
“The fetishization of Indian weddings and wedding tourism is a two-way street: the ‘seller’ gets money (and social status), and the buyer gets the product, namely, the experience of an Indian wedding without investing years of emotions in a friendship,” NYT quoted Parul Bhandari, Sociologist at the University of Cambridge as saying.
In order to be registered on the website, the couple has to fill out a questionnaire and recommend a “ceremony guide”, who is usually a close friend of theirs or any of the family members from either side. The ceremony guide is responsible for elaborating on the Indian ceremonies to the tourists and answering their doubts and queries related to the function.
