Trends Defining Indian Weddings In 2024

The Indian wedding industry has undergone a transformation over the past three years, navigating challenges posed by the pandemic and now showing promising signs of returning to normalcy.

Talking about some of the trends in store for 2024, Chetan Vohra, Managing Director, Line Communications & Weddingline emphasised, “I see a significant rise in collaborations going forward. Agencies are aligning with each other to cut down on unnecessary costs associated with recce visits and to gain local market knowledge. This is also in the interest of regional players who are looking to establish a larger footprint. Destinations within India are definitely a core focus for most planning agencies who are scouting to make the ‘Wed in India’ dream a reality.”

According to an annual survey by WedMeGood polling over 2,400 brides and grooms with wedding dates between September 2023 to April 2024, the average wedding guest size has seen a 14.8 per cent increase from 2022, now standing at 310 guests. 

Vohra stated, “Even the last season has seen a huge rise in numbers. We have welcomed this ‘back to normal’ phenomenon because we never did cut down staff or operations when the restrictions were in force. The cultural significance of weddings never changed and we knew this would be back to large celebrations.”

However, 12 per cent of couples are choosing intimate gatherings, prioritising intimacy and personalisation over grandeur.

Mehak Sagar Shahani, Co-founder of WedMeGood remarked, “If we look at the percentage of people hiring planners last year, the same number was 12 per cent so the current number of roughly 15 per cent is a significant jump in the number of couples opting for planning services and we foresee this trend to continue to grow. The same number in the US market is roughly 27-30 per cent, so we are still not there as culturally India has always been a more of a traditional, family-planning wedding industry but the segment is growing especially in the destination market given that couples are now busier.” 

Shahani noted that in India, planners have primarily focused on luxury weddings and weddings under 70 lakhs are predominantly planned independently.

Millennials are increasingly embracing the digital age, with 15.6 per cent revealing that they met their match on dating apps. 

Shahani asserted, “Matchmaking has primarily been a use case 'pushed' by parents, and as the average age of getting married is rising, so is the autonomy in making your own choices - both socially and financially. While a plethora of dating apps in India are for casual dating such as Tinder, there has been an emergence of serious dating apps as well such as Aisle.co, Hinge etc which have contributed to this increase.”

In 2023, 70 per cent of brides and grooms contributed in some aspect to financing their weddings, a trend anticipated to persist in 2024 as financially independent millennials will continue to actively contribute to their weddings. 59 per cent of people achieved an equal split between the bride and groom's family. 

Additionally, one of the most promising segments of the industry is wedding tourism, with the percentage of destination weddings increasing to 21 per cent in 2024, compared to 18 per cent in 2022. The upcoming destination in India, Rishikesh, with its growing number of hotels, is poised to become a hotspot for memorable celebrations according to the report.