If you are a resident of Delhi-NCR, prepare to see a barrage of baraats on the roads, and several brides and grooms prepping to tie the knot on March 4. As per the wedding industry insiders, thousands of marriages are anticipated on Friday, which is Phulera Dooj — one of the four most auspicious days in the year to get hitched.
“About 25,000 weddings are expected in Delhi-NCR on March 4. Getting married on this date doesn’t require a muhurat. That’s why couples who were unable to find a suitable date for their wedding, are going ahead with this,” says Anil Thadani, owner of Delhi-based Jea Band, adding, “Wedding venues ko lekar kaafi maara-maari ho gayi is baar… We even had to hire extra people to meet the demand, which has been expensive for us.”
Anubha Mittal, a Pitampura resident who is getting married on March 4, says, “We had to postpone my wedding earlier due to Covid-19 waves. Iss date par saaya nahin dekhna pada… So we started looking for vendors quite early on. We still faced difficulty selecting the venue; many were already booked.”
Daljeet Singh, a wedding planner from BigArtsEvents, feels the number may even be more than 25,000, since these are only estimates. He informs that his company is planning a wedding for a couple that “chose this date as it’s the last date of the first wedding season of the year”.
Neha Chaudhary, a city-based makeup artist echoes the demand for this date for weddings. “I’m completely booked out for March 4, and even a day before that. In fact I got all the bookings for this date in December 2021 itself, and I will be travelling a lot early to reach the wedding venue ahead of time and not get caught up in the rush.”
“Every time the Covid-19 restrictions ease, there is a maddening rush,” says wedding planner Sumathy Bachchan from Wedding Sutras, adding, “People want to get their ceremony done before anything goes wrong again. That’s what is creating this rush for venues and vendors. And because of this rush, the costs of flowers, transport and labour rates have also gone up.”
Author tweets @siddhijainn
