Hello Married Folks here, I posted a poll on twitter to figure how much money have Indians spent on their marriages? https://twitter.com/iso_anu/status/1373792517619998724?s=20 Please participate in the poll and help getting better insights on the trend

Are you planning to figure out probable costs of your own shaadi or some startup idea brewing? Or just curiosity? 😉

When you say how much money spent, do you mean just the bride, or the groom or combined?

Will gold count as expense?

I think gold you don’t count because you “technically” get to keep it. Comes down to cards, food, decorations, logistics, hotel rooms for guests and other such expenses.

My sister is getting married soon. Father has a set budget for the expenditure . Was thinking, is it worth it to spend so much on just marriages. A court marriage would need Rs. 1000-1500 and thats done. Why spend so much, save that money/ gift to your daughter/ educate her. These were my thoughts this morning.

I wish Indian parents understood that spending in marriage is waste, but then hard to convince. 🤷

Marriages are one ceremony where all logic goes for a toss - especially for middle class india. No matter how much financial sense it makes to NOT spend lavishly.. there’s some self imposed societal pressure to celebrate at scale…. And if it’s an arranged marriage, the ceremonies become basically societal posturing by both sides to show off “capabilities”. I saw some pretty shallow sides of my family during my wedding ceremony.. I think we’re still very primal when it comes to weddings.. Logic just doesnt exist. 😐

I think we’re still very primal when it comes to weddings.

In my observation, it is the same throughout the world, people take it up as a challenge of showing-off before they’re broke.

IMO, you should take the COVID ticket and get it done for cheaply without inviting anyone. I have attended 1 wedding over zoom sometime ago - which I was happy not to attend anyways 😊 You can take the money saved and invest it and probably buy a house in a few years. Just saying 😉

I have no say in this, they would do whatever they want. I will try to save wherever I could, and make them gift the savings to her. This is hard, but trying my best.

Btw it's "wedding" we are talking of here. Do spend a lot on your marriage 😉

Don’t know. I am frugal as hell.

@wonderful-dusk-20983 if you are replying to me - my statment was a bit ambiguous on reread. I meant dictionary difference between wedding and marriage. In agreement that don't waste money on weddings, irrespective of whether you are frugal or not. On the flip side, marriage being the relationship with your better half, meant spend on that 🙂

I get that and understand that 🙂. My Bad

@damp-coat-97256 u have tagged wrong anubhav here

@wonderful-dusk-20983 -- curious, how's the poll going on? 😜 On the topic of spending on marriages, I had this chat with my mother and having a court marriage is not an option it seems (not that I am getting married anytime soon). Parents never understand that spending on marriage is a big cost and the money can be diligently spent elsewhere. Although, in Bengali weddings, I noticed that spending is lesser compared to other demographics that I have weddings at (ps: I am a Bengali and naturally, attended more bengali weddings).

Updates after day 1

20lakhs + is madness. wtf.. are they counting the gold? Gold can skew these number higher by a lot.

I have run eventosaur.com - an event services marketplace, and have been part of weddingbazaar.com post acquisition of the former. One thing I can tell with confidence is that the price optimisation will not work out more because of the sentimentality of the whole process. It's very difficult to convince family (and extended family) of ROIs etc.