If this year more auspicious days were in November and December, 2025 will have more such dates in the first half.
Next year is looking quite strong in terms of the number of auspicious or muhurat dates, said Anam Zubair, director of consumer marketing, WeddingWire India, a wedding planning platform.
“The first half of next year is having almost the same number of days that you generally have in a full year. Next year will be heavier than the previous years in terms of muhurat dates,” she said.
She added that the auspicious dates this year “are in line with what we had in previous years. But the split of these auspicious dates is slightly higher in the second half. So this year, when we look at November and December, you have 13 auspicious days. Apart from those 13 dates, we are recommending an additional 12 dates that people could look at for getting married during the October-December period.”
In the December quarter last year, there were around nine muhurat dates versus the 13 this year.
Zubair also said that winter weddings are a craze among Indian couples. “They are generally preferred a lot more as the weather plays a very important role. December is the month that has the highest number of weddings, followed by November.”
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has pegged the number of weddings in India to be around 48 lakh this November and December. These weddings could generate business worth Rs 6 lakh crore, according to CAIT’s estimates.
This fiscal, H2FY25 will see 41 wedding days whereas last fiscal, the second half saw 30 such dates.
Story continues below Advertisement
Budgets and guest list
Wedding budgets have also gone up significantly.
“The average budget currently is around Rs 28.5 lakh and this is a 36 percent increase year-on-year. The average wedding cost was around Rs 16 lakh-18 lakh during the Covid times in 2020 and 2021,” Zubair said.
And in the post-Covid era, the guest lists have become bigger, which also pushes up budgets.
“During Covid and right after the pandemic, the costs (of a wedding) were lower because the guest list size was smaller. Guest list of 250-300 people came down to 50 people but those costs were an outlier. So, pre-Covid to now there is a huge jump in the cost of organising a wedding,” Zubair pointed out.
India is going back to bigger weddings, she said. “The average guest list size currently is somewhere around 352 or 356 people and there is almost a 14 percent year-on-year increase. We are going back to pre-Covid times when big guest lists were a norm. That being said, couples have still got that flavour of having intimate weddings. This, however, does not reduce the budget,” Zubair said.
That’s because the focus is on the experience. “Couples are going all out in terms of guest experience, in terms of customisation, personalisation, because they want to make sure that all the guests have the best experience and something that they will remember in times to come. Keeping all these factors in mind, budgets are on the rise,” said Zubair.
The size of the Indian wedding market is second only to China, Mugdha Sinha, director general of tourism at the Ministry of Tourism, said at a Federation of Hotels and Restaurants Associations of India event held last month.
“When we look at spends, over 54 percent of Indians spend more than Rs 10 lakh on an average. In India, 45 percent of the population out of the total 142 crore Indians are married and 31 billion Indians are middle class. We are in the age of affluence and there is more disposable income, so there is money to do all the destination weddings, there is scope of tourism happening around weddings.” Sinha said.
She added that India is number one in terms of size of the guest list. “On average, an Indian wedding has about 525 guests. When it comes to expenditure, wedding expenses are two times the average of what we spend on education, three times our annual income on average and five times GDP per capita,” Sinha added.
Wedding spends
Almost 45 percent of the wedding budget is allocated to the venue plus catering, Zubair noted.
“The next big spend is on decorations. Spends on this particular element can vary anywhere from 5-15 percent (of the total budget). Then comes photography and videography. A wedding is incomplete without you having those photos and videos to cherish and post on Instagram. This is an important cost factor. That comes almost to about 10 to 13 percent of a wedding budget,” she said.
There is an allocation of 15 to 18 percent of the total wedding cost to jewellery purchases. “This, however, can vary depending on how much heirloom jewellery is there, and how much new jewellery is being purchased.”
Some 5-8 percent of the expenditure is on wedding planners.
When it comes to who is financing the Indian weddings, Zubair said that it is a mix of families and couples spending on the event.
“Couples have taken a lot more on their plate over the years. We have seen in the last few years where couples have actively been taking charge of the planning and they are actively also looking at financing to some extent. So this year, when we were looking at the data, it’s almost 56 percent of the couples (coming on their platform) who said that they are managing the wedding finance,” she said.
