Foreign tourists can attend Indian weddings with a fees

A website, ‘Join My Wedding,’ allows foreign visitors to pay and attend grandeur wedding ceremonies in India, with a fees.

Marriage ceremonies in India are usually grand multi-day celebrations with their opulent decor, meaningful traditions, and lively receptions. Foreign tourists would have attended Indian weddings to experience the charm and diversity prevailing in each region. Now with this website tourists get an opportunity to attend a wedding ceremony, which they can select from the website and be part of it.

The practice is getting popularity among foreign tourists and a new tourism sector has evolved with a name ‘wedding tourism’.

“The concept was pretty new; we were also getting to know people from other countries. We were very much excited and open about it, given the fact that it was new,” said Surabhi Chauhan, a Delhi-based fund manager, who has registered in the website to invite guests for her wedding.

“Those who registered to attend our wedding included Australian travel bloggers Carly Stevens and Tim Gower, who paid around USD 200 for a two-day invitation,” she added.

Join My Wedding is tapping into an extremely lucrative market. The Indian wedding industry is worth an estimated USD 40 billion and is growing by around 20 per cent a year, according to experts.

The host can have a good share of the fees paid by visitors and part to be given to the website.

The web site is initiated by Orsi Parkanyi from Australia. As per the founder the objective of the website is to invite people to share their culture and connect through life events.

“If you think about it, there is nothing more cultural than a wedding, because you have every cultural element present; the local people, local food, customs, the outfit, the music, basically every cultural element is right there,” said Orsi Parkanyi.

As per the founder, around 100 foreign travellers have used the service until now.