From Sabyasachi to Suffuse, que the day trips to Southall and Sparkhill, for dress fittings and jewellery picking, with the endless mehndi dance rehearsals, and numerous pots piling up from making late-night karak chai.
During the pandemic, lockdown weddings meant that people by default had to limit their expenditures and guest lists, to accommodate immediate family only.
With the UK inflation rates hitting a 40 year high as prices climb up to 9% for gas and electricity bills, hitting millions of households, as energy bills soar and deepen the cost-of-living crisis, the nation is in a state of economic distress.
The UK wedding industry is worth around £14.7bn, with the average amount spent on a wedding being £17,300 in 2021, as reported by the Hitched National Wedding Survey.
However, wedding experts claim that British Asian weddings account for nearly half of the industry value, with traditionally larger family affairs, and multiple events.
South Asian weddings can average anything between £50,000-£100,000 on their wedding, depending on how many functions they hold for their celebrations.
Asian Sunday spoke to Hitched, a London-based South Asian luxurious wedding planning expert Rohita Pabla.
“The type of clientele we work with are spending £80k+ for their weddings. Many brides have a dream of how they want their wedding to look, and we work within these budgets to make it a reality” says the wedding expert.
“A lot of the pressures of a South Asian wedding is from society, as we see many clients who are in societies, where they have been invited to many extravagant weddings and the expectation from those couples and families is to also host a luxury wedding.”
Pabla reports that last year, the Hitched National Wedding Survey showed that wedding spend was up by 90% since the year before.
“Many couples are now understanding that every seat filled is an additional cost and are therefore reducing the number of people and having the lavish wedding at a fraction of the cost”.
In an interview with Asian Sunday, the Corporate Director of Asiana Wedding Magazine spoke about post-pandemic wedding trends.
“We’ve seen the sizes of the weddings getting smaller through the pandemic and coming out of lockdown, but the change and the trend that we are seeing primarily is that the younger generation is more comfortable with smaller, more intimate weddings,” says Director Rajesh Nair.
“There are no longer the 800 or thousands guest list weddings like we did a big bridal show in Grosvenor House, the attendance was not as much as it would have been pre-pandemic, but it was still in the thousands.
“When the lockdown was lifted, around January and February time, there was this surge of Asian weddings, almost all suppliers got totally booked so that shows that the environment of luxury weddings is still active, it’s just that the numbers have reduced for sure.”
Women’s Project Officer, Shanaz Ali from the BEAP Community centre, talks to Asian Sunday about how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting the community.
“There’s been a massive difference in how we used to have weddings with hundreds of guests, but it’s not like that anymore simply because people can’t afford it”.
The community Project Officer told Asian Sunday traditions have been lost and people are upset, as guests’ lists have been reduced to accommodate lesser people at wedding functions.
“Some people do get really upset if they don’t get an invite, that’s normal in our community, especially if people are close to that family, they would say I can’t believe I didn’t get invited”.
Ali says smaller weddings have become the new norm, simply because “People can’t afford it, because the cost of living has gone so high, are they going to spend that much on weddings, when the day-to-day living is getting hard?”.
Asian Sunday spoke to a bride-to-be that has had to plan her wedding in under one month, due to familial issues and personal circumstances.
For Jameela Yaqoob, a 29-year-old bride-to-be, double-booked venues, anxiously anticipating orders from abroad and inflations of wedding vendors have become a daily cause of stress for her.
“My artificial jewellery and outfits are coming from abroad, purely because of financial purposes and also because of the lack of time, as well as them being a fraction of the price, and a third of what I would get them for in the UK”.
The Nelson-based solicitor says venues have put their prices up, because “As we have just come out of a pandemic the venues have inflated the prices to cover the costs of their rentals that they lost through COVID.
“Usually, Asian weddings can go on for a week or two, but now a lot of people, including myself must cut down the number of days because of the financially difficult times we are living in.
The bride-to-be says she decided on having a 3-day wedding, which includes one of the days being the religious ceremony because she wanted “A smooth transaction” however, has still had to constantly watch her stipend.
“My parents are paying for my day, which is the ‘barat’ giving away day and they are probably going to go into debt for it because there are still expectations to be met”.
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