Add Indian wedding elements to energize any non-Hindu wedding event
Being a wedding planner for Indian wedding events is both a pleasure and a challenge. Hindu wedding celebrations in particular are often large affairs lasting for days, involving multiple families and including colorful customs and numerous pre-wedding parties. As America’s substantial South Asian population grows in size and stature, Indian music, Indian food, and Indian movies are inspiring exotic wedding trends that can easily be adapted for non-Hindu wedding celebrations by non-Indian wedding planners. Wedding planner businesses in cities with a large South Asian client base are finding it pleasurable, and profitable, to diversify. Starting a wedding planning business in one of these communities is especially rewarding when knowledge about world weddings is part of your training for wedding planning as a career. In fact, most wedding planning careers today are multicultural almost by definition. This is equally true of the lucrative destination wedding business for planning a wedding in a local market where the typical couple getting married represents a melding of different cultures, ethnicities, and traditions. Indian wedding culture in the USA is particularly open to crossing ethnic barriers and religious boundaries. Indian music and Indian food come naturally to almost everyone. But learning how to become a wedding planner today must include a familiarity with real Hindu wedding rituals, rules, and their reasons, information that can only be acquired from experienced professional wedding planners, not from mass-market Indian movies.
Learn Hindu Wedding Traditions from an Indian Wedding Planner
The wedding budget for a typical American Hindu wedding is three times greater than the total cost for a wedding in most other cultures. Where wedding planning is complicated by full-time careers, traditional family tasks are outsourced to professionals, typically Indian wedding planners who have an intimate understanding of Hindu wedding practices. But any Indian wedding remains a marriage of two families, not just a union of two people, with large guest lists, complicated logistics, and above-average wedding stress. It's frequently a challenge to find wedding venues that permit the fire ritual that is central to every Hindu wedding ceremony. Reception sites that accommodate 1,000 or more guests are also in short supply. But big hotels, major wine country facilities, and venues for large outdoor weddings in places with Indian populations have made it their business to attract their share of the lucrative Indian wedding market. But you don't have to be Indian to become your area's Hindu wedding expert, to service your local Indian wedding market, or to incorporate Hindu wedding elements tastefully into your client’s non-Indian wedding. Anyone entering the wedding event planning business must be ready to rise quickly to every occasion when wedding event planner jobs require servicing multicultural clients, or producing a spectacular celebration for any couple, whether they desire the drama of Indian wedding décor, the excitement of Indian food, or the energy of Indian music, if only because they enjoy Indian movies.
Course Video Tutorial: 'An Indian Wedding Planner Teaches Hindu Weddings and Music' (31:09)
Purvi Shah, the owner of Avant Planners, is a sought-after Indian wedding planner serving a growing portion of Silicon Valley's wealthy Hindu wedding market, a mobile community of technocrats with family and friends who travel frequently between the West Coast and India. These jetsetters commission and attend Purvi's elaborate Hindu wedding celebrations at hotels, temples, and wineries from Napa Valley to downtown San Jose. The information that she shares with Members is designed for non-Indian wedding business owners who want to tap the growing Indian wedding market, transform humdrum hotel weddings, or adapt colorful Hindu wedding customs for non-Indian wedding planner jobs. In this course video tutorial, Purvi provides Members in-depth detail on key aspects of the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony and celebration, with practical advice on how to adapt these elements to enhance a non-Indian wedding event. She also conducts a live demonstration while directing the vendors for a 500-guest Indian wedding reception being held in the main ballroom of a major Hindu wedding hotel.
Learn 12 essential elements of Hindu wedding tradition and Indian music trends:
- The meaning of the Hindu wedding fire ritual
- The role of the pundit and the place of Sanskrit in the ceremony
- Traditional family obligations in planning, funding, and hosting wedding events
- How to choose an auspicious date and auspicious colors for the wedding day
- Hindu wedding themes and how to carry them out in non-Indian wedding events
- Alternating theme and color combinations between the ceremony and the reception
- Sari, turban, and jewelry wedding trends in Indian movies and contemporary culture
- Traditional Indian music and tasty Indian food for any wedding event
- Three common characteristics of traditional Hindu wedding clients
- Three cultural facts every non-Indian wedding vendor needs to know
- Three options for structuring the Hindu wedding planner's fee
- Personal qualities needed for careers in wedding planning
