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One needs to carefully tread the thin but solid line between the sublime and the ridiculous.
Nikita Puri reports.
A year ago, while Hansika Chandiramani was getting her wedding mehendi applied, her guests were at a counter put up especially for the event.
With bright lights and mirrors, the counter doubled as a studio where the guests could try on sunglasses, and then take them home as party favours. These glasses were sponsored by Scotland-based Mac V Eyewear, one of the many brands that backed Chandiramani's wedding.
For Chandiramani, the idea of getting the entire wedding sponsored started out as a joke with her fiancé (now husband), Gaurav Kumar.
"The longer we thought about it, the more we liked how unconventional the idea was," says the 31-year-old founder of celebrity management company HC Media.
But when Chandiramani approached companies to sponsor her big day, this was the question she was repeatedly asked: was it a "real" wedding?
Chandiramani wasn't an influencer, blogger or a celebrity.
"I've only reached about 3,000 people now, which isn't all that big a number," she says.
But as she convincingly pushed the idea, more and more brands warmed up to it.
In the end, inviting guests to Chandiramani's wedding were cards designed by Ravish Kumar, who has previously designed for Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput as well as Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra, among others. (On an average, high-end invitation cards can cost ₹15,000 per piece.)
Chandiramani's wedding wardrobe was courtesy Flyrobe, a company that rents out branded clothes.
Her jewellery, flowers for the venue, the music, the make-up, everything was sponsored, as were the wines and cocktail blends, and her three-tiered wedding cake.
The money the couple saved on the wedding they invested in a house.
From parents paying for the wedding to paying for your own wedding to getting others to fund your wedding, the buck has been successfully passed on.
With brands cosying up to the perks of social media mentions and hashtags, sponsored weddings that are Instagrammable and blog-worthy are no longer a privilege earmarked for film stars and high-profile celebrities alone.
Chandiramani is just one of the few brand-savvy people to have realised the untapped potential of India's sponsored wedding bazaar
But while she had to reach out to brands, when news of Aanam Chasmawalah's engagement got out, the Mumbai-based founder of style blog 'What When Wear' was flooded with offers for sponsorships.
The 26-year-old insists this was because of past associations with brands. The fact that she has well over 100,000 followers on social media didn't hurt.
"We did a lot of sifting through the list of brands that had approached us," she says. "We shortlisted according to logistics and personal preferences. It worked out really well."
Chasmawalah's attire for three events, as well as husband-to-be Gerard's bespoke outfits, were courtesy a number of designers -- Monisha Jaising, Shirrin Shah and Nikita Mhaisalkar, to name a few.
Their footwear was sponsored by Tresmode.
And shortly before the wedding, Forest Essentials threw a skin-care party for all the bridesmaids and groomsmen.
"I am usually the person who does the makeup for my friends. I was the bride this time, so that wasn't going to be possible," Chasmawalah says. So MAC (Cosmetics) hosted a personalised makeup tutorial and party for 17 of her bridesmaids.
"Brands like to work with people who are on the same wavelength as them. It's important to come from a space of transparency, be it the brands you are working with or your followers across social media," she says. "It is a healthy space to be in if you can discuss things openly with brands and your followers alike."
The whole brand integration made sense because it happened organically, feels Chasmawalah, who sported jewellery from Jaipur Jewels India and Minawala.
"The idea behind the collaboration (with Chasmawalah) was to showcase our wide collection of wedding jewellery," says Shehzad Zaveri, creative director, Minawala. "The exposure we expected was specific to blog posts, Facebook and Instagram, the objective being huge online exposure through this partnership," he adds.
In the old days, says brand expert Harish Bijoor, it was all about readership in media terms, viewership in television terms, listenership in radio terms and OTS (opportunity to see) in terms of outdoor advertising.
"Then those days morphed into the days of the celebrity who jumped out of the realm of Bollywood, cricket and every other sundry sport. Now the new celebrity is the blogger," he says.
To an extent, believes Bijoor, "blogger-followerships are more solid than the cosmetic followerships of celebrities".
A blogger's audience is cobbled together from the perspective of editorial content, as opposed to advertising content.
"We've moved from celebrity sponsorship to focusing on blogger micro-followership. God today is in the detailing and not in the aggregating, as it was in the easy old days," he adds.
As Chandiramani's wedding showed, there is no limit to how far imagination can take you.
When Chandiramani let out that she wanted an after-hours cocktail party (she wanted to be the bride who partied till 4 am), Vaktra approached her with its silent headsets. After midnight, given regulations around noise control, her party switched to an all-silent disco.
On an average, these headsets can be rented out at ₹400 to ₹700 per piece, depending on the size of the gathering. There were 250 to 300 headsets for Chandiramani's guests, all sponsored by the company.
"Weddings have always been kind of a family-only affair, so we knew this was bold enough to be the talk of the town," says Chandni Banerjee from Vaktra. "We approached Hansika (Chandiramani) because we thought a brand-sponsored shaadi, where the bride markets her wedding, was a very unique concept. It also helped us get in touch with clientele who wanted to organise their own silent parties."
The brand's wireless headsets were first spotted in Karan Johar's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
A Karan Johar-esque touch was also visible on Chandiramani's big day, when the baraat entered the wedding venue led by women playing dholaks.
Behind them, the customary groom's mare was replaced by an autorickshaw decked with flowers. From the three-wheeler emerged Chandiramani in a fuschia pink lehenga with gold embroidery.
Leading this unconventional "bride's baraat", she then danced her way into the wedding venue, her LED-sneakers peeking out from all the fushcia.
While brands are now increasingly looking to partner with successful bloggers, the way they did with Chasmawalah, not every blogger wants sponsorship.
When it was time for Mumbai-based blogger and entrepreneur Masoom Minawala to tie the knot, she decided to go the "virtual wedding" way instead. She live streamed the ceremonies, including a pre-wedding Holi-themed cocktail party, to ensure her readers felt "connected" to her.
Almost 70 per cent of her Instagram posts are paid partnerships. But for her own wedding, she stayed clear of sponsorship.
"It was just a personal choice," she says.
Only a few months ago, Singapore-based blogger Melissa Koh had a heavily sponsored wedding.
Guests could get themselves a makeover using Dior cosmetics and wedding favours included TWG Tea, a luxury brand, as well as macarons and artisanal soap.
With designer dresses for her bridesmaids and gifts from crystal brand Swarovski and luxury jeweller Tiffany, guests soon realised how sponsored the wedding was. Many felt the sponsorships had "cheapened" the wedding, making it "insincere".
While this is a valid fear, "India is a much more tolerant market on this count," says Bijoor. "It will take a while for that to happen, though bloggers need to carefully tread the thin but solid line between the sublime and the ridiculous in terms of sponsorship," he says.
When Chandiramani approached brands, she did it with the proposal of shooting an "in-film-wedding video".
"It's like product placement in a film. The only difference was this was my wedding film," she says.
As the bride twirls in the video, a ticker points out to the sponsors of her costumes, jewellery, make-up, and so on.
Likewise, in one of Masoom Minawala's videos aimed at ensuring her followers were looped into the wedding preparations, the fashionista is seen discussing one of her wedding lehengas with designer Sandeep Khosla.
In contrast to these videos is stand-up comedian Bharti Singh's brand plug-ins.
"Bharti ki shaadi" was an elaborate hashtag we saw last year. The posts show the comedian shopping for jewellery et cetera. In one of the many such videos, Singh walks into Big Bazaar and shops for chips, bhujia, soft drinks and comforters as part of her wedding preparations. The video can easily be taken for an advertisement, and not an actual wedding errand.
"It has to be a seamless integration," says freelance filmmaker Joel Pinto, the maker of Band Baajaa and Brands! (The Unconventional Wedding), Chandiramani's YouTube wedding video featuring brands she brought on board.
Brand sponsorship is just one of the ways to offset wedding costs.
Another is to make it a ticketed affair for foreign guests, a service provided by Join My Wedding. Since April 2016, this startup has helped 50 tourists become part of 30 Indian weddings.
As they gear up for a traditional Rajput wedding in February, Amrendrar Singh and Garima are one of the many couples who've opened their homes to foreign tourists. While tickets on the site start at $150, their wedding is priced at $250 per head.
Join My Wedding takes a 15 per cent commission on the sale of each ticket; the rest goes into the couple's kitty.
The invite includes guests being involved in Vinayak (Ganesh) puja, haldi ceremony and folk dance festivities. Plus, "we'll thrown in a Rajputi poshak (traditional Rajput attire) for the wedding ceremony," promises the Jodhpur-based couple.
About a year ago, a Mumbai-based couple had made a similar offer via Join My Wedding, with guests being invited to be a part of the sangeet, baraat and vidaai processions as well. Tickets were priced upwards of ₹20,000; they sold 40.
Scroll through Join My Wedding's website and it's a stunning testament to how many Indians are welcoming the trend. From Haldia in West Bengal to a Malayalee wedding, here's a tightly-packed wedding calendar right up till March.
"Besides building connections with people of other countries and cultures, inviting foreign tourists also helps couples to potentially offset some of their wedding-related costs," explains Orsi Parkanyi, co-founder of the Australia-based company.
"As long as the couple that is getting married is comfortable with the idea of having a ticketed wedding, it's a perfectly fine shift. And, if it helps pay the bills too, so much the better," says Chasmawalah.
There's clearly a big market for sponsoring Indian weddings. In fact, some of the brands Chandiramani approached urged her to launch a company that'd help other couples to get their weddings sponsored.
"It's too much work," Chandiramani says, laughing.
But perhaps she will. Perhaps someone else will. This is the land of weddings, after all.
