Indian Wedding on a Budget | 20+ TIPS (2019)
Updated: Sep 9, 2019
Ajay Manaktala planned his own wedding in Tulum, Mexico and helps brides and grooms cut costs the right way for their Big Fat Indian Wedding. He is also a most viewed writer on Quora under Weddings and Indian Weddings and blogs extensively about most shaadi topics, including the definitive Indian wedding cost and pricing sheet in America.
It's 2019 and Indian weddings are as expensive as they've ever been. The average “middle-class” Indian wedding in America is between $220,000 and $300,000.
However a bigger Indian wedding doesn't always mean better and in this article I'm going to show you twenty three free tricks to save you money on your wedding expenses. Even if you CAN afford it, we see couples wasting money daily on a lot of things that aren't required so let's be smart about our budgets!
First, the assumptions are this is a local wedding and not a destination wedding. Although a great way to reduce your headcount from say 500 to 250 is to do a destination wedding (which will of course add some costs in other areas though).
You ready fam? Let's do this.
20+ Innovative Ways to Reduce Wedding Expenses
1. Ask Hotel or Venue For More Stuff, Not Less Cost.
This tip is so underrated. I say it in multiple articles all over this site.
I know you're not in the business of banquets or corporate events but man oh man...you CAN sign a contract and THEN ask for extra goodies but it's way harder to sign first and then ask them to reduce the cost.
Your wedding venue may not reduce their fee of say $50,000 or 10 lakhs (India)...but you can always ask them to:
include extra rooms since it’s a sunk cost anyways
free breakfast
late checkouts
free premium wifi
Extra tea/coffee in common areas
longer hours for music (dj and ballroom),
extra valet parking,
more flowers (from in-house decorators)
waive an insurance fee (hotel facilities)
extra power consumption (Los Angeles hotels)
discount on massages and room service for in-house guests
1-2 more free bridal suites
special rates for your wedding party (this is obvious but just fyi)
Venues will always give more but don’t want to reduce their incoming money revenue.
Look at sample prices of food and hotels so you know the range.
Here are some Indian wedding sample pricing for food in America and Thailand for example.
2. Newer Decorators or Wedding Planners Are Eager to Earn Their Name.
Now a days with Instagram you can easily check someone’s prior work and be in good hands rather than have such a big risk. If they’ve done even 1 or 2 weddings before in Jaipur or a big Delhi Leela palace/Beverly Hills type of hotel they’re fine, and you’ll be fine.
I personally find vendors who are new and eager to earn their name go above and beyond the call of duty.
(NOT ALL...but if they've done at least 2-3 events and you find them way more responsive that someone who is acting pricey...it's ok to take risks sometimes). Especially if their social media game is strong!
For flowers, you can either use less flowers if your hotel keeps fresh flowers in common areas daily, OR you can ask your decorator to use artificial flowers in areas where it won’t matter (e.g. just be seen, not touched).
These are a great way to bring down floral costs.
3. Flowers have Marginal Gains
Most weddings really go overboard on flowers especially in weddings in the US.
Can you look at an event and tell the difference between $30,000 in flowers and $40,000 in flowers?
Because if you can’t chances are your guests won’t either.
Most designers and decorators know this, so I would suggest you ask your designer for photos of a $15,000 setup a $25,000 setup and a $50,000 setup so you can see the difference.
4. Don’t Overestimate Hotel Rooms You Need Early On
You know how free trials ask you to pay a dollar for a month, because they also know once they have your credit card you'll likely be lazy about cancelling? Hotels do the same thing on a bigger scale with your early room guarantees.
Hotels will try to scare you to sign a contract with extra rooms, and sure, some might sell out.
But 90% of weddings I see, including my own (hey, some of us never learn) book too many rooms and then pay for 5–10 rooms (comes to $3000 to $5000 extra) for empty rooms not used or just given off to whoever.
Worst case if the hotel does indeed sell out you can keep extra people who confirmed late in a different hotel (e.g. they’re fault for booking late!). But you can always apply pressure to your planner at the hotel as the date gets closer, post contract to give you some more rooms on some last minute confirmations!
5. Buy your clothes even earlier than Auntie says.
Tailors will charge more if they know you’re in a rush and regardless of what you think, they're experts at figuring this out.
If you need your outfit on Feb 11th, go shopping in September.
If the tailor asks, tell him your wedding is March but you're thinking of a photoshoot in Jan.
When a tailor knows your in no rush, they have less leverage.
Also, for anybody who swears they need a Sabyasachi, if you want it, and you can EASILY afford it, heck yes, go be a princess!
But if you're debating the cost...and did a blind test between a $1500 Lehenga and a $15,000 lehenga I don't think you'll notice much of a difference.
Also the Sabya will take you 4 months. But they'll all be gorgeous!
6. Paperless Invites are Preferred these days.
Trust us, this custom isn't that important anymore. Don't waste money on big fancy invites that will go in the drawer and eventually in the trash.
More and more people prefer to send wedding invites via whatsapp.
A 50 or 60 year old wedding guest is internet savvy and nobody cares that you didn't send them a fancy $7 printed invite that you're just going to throw away anyways, or put in a drawer never to see again.
Most people prefer a whatsapp image or simple thing to recall on the events on their phone, so please please please if your crowd is hip/modern/young or at least not super traditional, avoid the paper printed invites!!!
These invitations are updatable, convenient and of course...much cheaper.
7. Use a YouTube Playlist for Smaller Functions
Obviously we're DJs and hope you hire us for all your events. But in some events, like a smaller mehndi function at someone's house, it may not make sense to spend the $2500 to get a DJ there for six hours.
Instead, if you're not counting on a DJ to be there the entire time, use a "mehndi playlist 2019" or otherwise to simply set it and forget it from an iPhone.
Just makes sure your sound system is loud enough, and your phone is on airplane mode! The last thing you want is a million notifications always messing with the music!
8. Bollywood Choreography...Online.
They're so many videos on YouTube that pop up daily regarding Bollywood choreography for pretty much any song that releases.
If you have the budget, we've said over and over on this blog that hiring a choreographer for $1200 for five to six songs is a good idea, as you can then simply just WhatsApp or Google drive the dance files over and everyone can practice on their own.
But if you don't h