Wedding.rediff.com

Unless you intend to doing a quickie in court and getting back to the office, you would certainly require to plan that wedding ceremony. This Rediff site lets you do just that. The wedding planner here is a good way of listing things to be done and keeping track of what’s done. After specifying your community - Hindu, Christian, Sikh or Muslim (with all the different sects of each) - you get a list of ceremonies involved and what you need for them. Then you can enter your wedding budget in The Quick Budgeter and in no time you get a neat box telling you how much to allocate for each item, right from the trousseau to the hall decorations. The section on jewellery lists some fine baubles and places where you can buy them. And if you want to get a photographer, caterer, florist or mehendiwali, the Wedding Directory sure proves helpful. If you believe that marriages are made by the stars, the Astrology-section helps you match horoscopes of the bride and groom to be. Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, medical director at Mumbai’s Malpani Infertilty Clinic, provides health information for the newly married couple. The couple can even plan their honeymoon through this site.

www.matri.com

This is a straightforward matrimonial advertisement site with the advantage of worldwide access. There are no other features or services offered except an online chat, through which couples can communicate with each other before finally fixing a meeting. There is a section called Cupid, where members (you have to register here) can save the profile of the mate they are interested in and get a notification whenever matching new entries are posted. When we accessed the site, there were about 10,000 profiles listed.

www.jeevansathi.com

This site which is sans any graphics whatsoever boasts of "21,642 matrimonial listings, increasing daily!" One would think that at least those who have found their mates would get off the site. Listing is for free and so is the search. You can input your search criteria or browse the complete listings. A new service is the computerized search of suitable matches as per your criteria with the result being sent to your mailbox. This is a paid service as are other ‘Revenue Model’ services like value added listings (with photograph) and astrology. Other features of the site include honeymoon destinations, wedding services, auspicious times, planning your wedding and counseling. Links are provided to other matrimonial sites as well.

www.sumangali.com

The details on brides and grooms available here are collected from various news media advertisements and registrations at different community marriage bureaus as well as direct registrations with the site. This Coimbatore-based computerised matrimonial bureau claims to have -details and bio-datas of thousands of brides and grooms on 250 castes of India.- After registering, you can get information of new matrimonial additions to the site (which may not necessarily suit your criteria) through e-mail. A special feature aimed specially at NRIs, is the conversion of e-mail to snail mail which is available at a charge ranging from $ 10 to $ 100. There is just one other service offered here, that of an astrologer.

www5.theknot.com

If you’re planning a western-style marriage, now you don’t have to tie yourself into knots before tying the knot. The knot is just the place you will log in to, before that big marriage ceremony. Marriage etiquette, wedding ideas, dresses and suits, bachelor parties- The Knot touches on all these and then some more. A key feature here is the facility of hoisting personal pages where you can broadcast details of your marriage-where you met, how you got engaged, how to reach the marriage venue, photographs etc - across the globe. You can arrange things so that only the first page is visible to everyone, with the others, with personal details, requiring a password. There are links to vendors of marriage items too, so if you have that close relative coming in from abroad for your great event, you can just send across your wish list.

www.inmatch.com

This is a funky, youthful singles site which does not have only a ‘view : matrimony’ objective. You can register here to make friends, e-pals, arrange dates and, of course, find that ultimate soul mate. The site boasts of a membership of almost 60,000, built up in six months. But I would measure the success of the site by knowing how many have unregistered themselves in that period, because once you find a mate you have no use for a singles site, do you?" Or maybe you do. Besides matchmaking, the site offers other features like contests, polls, celebrity dates, movie premieres, interactive courses (yes, there is an ‘active’ in that last phrase) and the inmatch Bash where members are invited to let their hair down and mix with others.