The Ultimate Luxury Wedding exhibition starts today
The Ultimate Luxury Wedding exhibition starts todayWeddings never go out of fashion or business in India. The following figures should clear doubts, if there are any.
The wedding industry is worth Rs 1.25 lakh crore in India and it is growing at the rate of 15-20 per cent annually. With the Indians' craze for lavish weddings at its peak, exhibitors and designers are making a beeline to get a share of the pie.
Pandals are more like film sets; big designers like JJ Valaya and Ritu Kumar are coming up with special wedding lines and theme parties have replaced the parties at five-star hotels and a 'good' wedding takes around Rs 2 crore to organise.
The exhibitors, in recent times, have been able to make it more lavish as well as easy for those with a fat wallet to splurge with ease and panache. The focus is increasingly on creating exhibitions and showcase events where one can do all their shopping from jewellery and costumes to honeymoon packages. Close on the heels of the 11th edition of Bridal Asia, Ultimate Luxury Weddings a four day exhibition is going to commence today at Select City Walk, Saket.
However, Divya Gurwara, CEO of Bridal Asia, was quick to claim credit. "A lot of people have realised the growth potential of the Indian wedding industry and are out to test the waters. Also when one event does well, there are always others who want to follow," she told MiD DAY.
Gurwara also rejected that the competition will eat into her success. "I have been putting up Bridal Asia for over a decade and what others do hardly matters to me. I believe everyone has a target audience. We will remain committed to our philosophy of making this event bigger and better with each passing year." On the other hand, the Ultimate Luxury Weddings claims to create a veritable Mecca for the indulgent bride. "We are completely in the luxury space. Most of the other exhibitions are focussed more or less on clothes. Here we are going to give a 360 degrees solution to the wedding including jewellery, accessories, home decors, holidays, spas and gifts apart from trousseau," said Parineeta Sethi, the brain behind the event.
"We want to focus on luxury and that is why we only have 30 brands participating at our event. Bridal Asia, on the other hand, is a huge exhibition but they just don't focus on luxury space," she said, while rejecting comparisons with Bridal Asia. Now, only the footfalls will decide who walks away with the larger wedding pie.
Designs on youBridal Asia'09 boasts of big names like Ritu Beri, Shane-Falguni Peacock, Rina Dhaka and Gaurav Gupta among others, Ultimate luxury has also roped in Ritu Kumar, Ritu Beri and Raghanvendrau00a0 Rathore.
