Phase 2 of wedding season likely to be very strong, says CAIT

The season of big fat Indian weddings is underway. According to the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a total of 32 lakh weddings have taken place till December 14 this year with Rs 3.75 lakh crore worth of expenditure. And phase two, starting from January 14, 2023, is expected to be very strong. Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder and CEO at Matrimony.com and Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary at CAIT discussed more on the demand trends in this wedding season.

The first phase of Indian weddings ended on December 14, 2022, and the second phase will begin on January 14, 2023. India has crossed Rs 4 lakh crore of wedding expenditure this season. “Next phase, which is going to start from January 14, 2023, to July 15, 2023, is going to be a robust season and ultimately the economy will be benefited,” said Khandelwal.

According to a survey conducted by CAIT, in 35 cities, the wedding expenditure this season is going to be very high.

During COVID, there was a surge in the number of people signing up for matrimonial websites. However, the momentum did not continue.

“Post-COVID, we saw a drop in the number of people signing up. We didn’t have the similar kind of growth or uptick that we had during the COVID period,” said Janakiraman.

This had some impact on the growth of the business.

Next year, the growth is expected to touch the earlier level of growth, Janakiraman added.

According to Khandelwal, after two years of COVID, this is going to be a rising period for weddings for the next couple of years.

The number of invitees to weddings has gone down but the spending has been on the higher side.

People now want to spend more. Destination wedding is growing at a fast pace. Therefore, there is tremendous demand at least for the next couple of years — for 2023 and 2024, said Khandelwal.

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