CHENNAI: Phoebe’s wedding in the sitcom Friends has had most of us hoping for a wedding of our own out in the streets, with snowflakes and sheets of soft white snow making one look like a snow princess. We are not completely sure if wedding planners in the city can promise us snow and a wedding on the streets, (especially if you had Mount Road in mind) but they are offering us this, that and a bit more. The trend of handing over the complete planning process of a wedding to a stranger is something we never expected some of our even most liberal parents to do. However, surprisingly, the trend is catching up in the city. “Our clients are usually NRIs who have just come back to India to get married and have no idea who to turn to for any wedding requirements,” clarifies Mathangi Srinivasamurti, who runs Aaishvaryam, a Chennai-based wedding planning company, with her partner Chitra Mahesh. But apart from lost NRIs, the upper and upper-middle class families have also been actively making use of the services of the wedding planners in the city. “But unlike in Delhi or Mumbai, people here are still very conscious about how much they spend on weddings and have tight budgets,” explains Mathangi. This is how it works. Depending on the size of the wedding, the bride, groom and the families meet the planners three or two months ahead of the wedding. “This is important to be able to block the venue, be it a hotel or a mandapam and fix the date with all the vendors and caterers,” says Mathangi. The couple tells them in detail what they want their wedding to be like, with inputs from the family and the planners. Then, the theme, the invites, clothes and accessories, décor, give-away bags, entertainment, the guest list and the food options are decided. “Sometimes, the décor has to match the invites or the outfit of the bride. There is a lot of planning that goes into the process,” says Mathangi. The planning also extends to making accommodation and transport arrangements for guests who will be coming in for the wedding from out of town. “We should be ready for anything, but at the same time, try to challenge our creativity and come up with new looks for each wedding,” says Mathangi. According to her, as long as everything goes like clockwork and everything looks good in the photographs, with no colour schemes clashing, the planning is a success. So, with professional wedding planners taking over, parents and couples can sit back and enjoy the most special day of their lives, but not without a constant nag at the back of their minds about unwanted wedding crashers. But we are pretty sure that the professionals have a solution to deal with even that!
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