Marriages made in India.

Kerala is rediscovering the virtues of the traditional Hindu marriage. A State that had prided itself on adopting the “quickest” marriage ceremony ever (five miutes flat; in fact, outsiders complain thAT if you turn away for a minute, you may miss the big moment) is now rolling out the red carpet for elaborate traditional rituals that is bringing in cold hard dollars and pounds.
On Feb 10, John Foreman and Nicola Pauling from the U.K., with their roots in New Zealand, got married at the Bolgatty Palace Hotel in Kochi to the accompaniement of Hindu rituals. A week earlier, a sexagenarian Canadian couple, John Grant and Judith Sketon Grant, renewed their wedding vows after 40 years of marriage with a traditional wedding “demo” at the Brunton Boatyard Hotel at Fort Kochi.
These are not isolated cases, but part of a growing trend for “global marriages,” with Indian traditions as the focal point. In 2001 alone, the Coconut Lagoon Hotel in Kumarakom, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s favoured vacation spot, “hosted” three such global marriages.
Cosmetic, exotic, flavor of the season, call it what you will, the fact is these marriages are dead serious business for the people involved. Especially, the State’s hospitality industry. For the Foreman-Pauling wedding at the Bolghatty Palace, the guests, relativs and friends, flew in from places as far away as the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, France and South Africa. The hotel bill alone came to $50,000.
For all their apparent extravagance, the couple are no hot shots. Foreman is a pharmaceutical retailer and Pauling a journalist with Reuters. The couple who met two years back, chose Bolghatty Palace for the big event after visiting the state seven months ago. The room rent for the guests came to $2,500 lakhs per day. The booking was for a week. And this was not the first marriage at the hotel. A Belgian had married an NRI according to Hindu rites last December.
The Canadian sexagenarians shelled out $15,000 for their “marriage” and 20 guests, according to the Worlwide Adventures India Private Limited, a Canadian subsidiary, that managed the event. This is not a phemenon limited to Kerala. International Travel House, the travel wing of ITC Ltd., has also launched a wedding management service to package “The Royal Indian Wedding.” The service is targetted at NRIs and was introduced in New Delhi recently. Royal Weddings (RW) has tie-ups with the

Welcome Heritage Hotels and some other palace hotels to organize weddings in these upper crust venues. RW offers package deals organizing the entire event, including a “royal procession” (baraat) with vintage cars, liveried guards and lancers on horseback, reception at the hotel with traditional aarti and tilak, and grand ceremonies in the “Royal” style.
That’s not all. The service helps client choose the right kind of invitation cards, the sangeet and mehendi, the grooming and the beauty treatment and the wedding shopping. It even arranges the marriage certificates.
While the cost of a similar wedding in the United States would work out to around $3,800 per person per day, according to the RW, they can offer the ceremony at around $1,900 per person per day, for a group of 10, including airfare.
But it’s not simply a matter of tourism, says Kerala’s Director of Tourism, Alkesh Kumar Sharma, “This is a new phenomenon which has to be encouraged not merely for the tourism, but for spreading the values of our civilization.”
While this may be debatable, global marriages in India clearly appear to be the flavor of the year, at the very least.

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