Wedding planner

MARKETING: From wedding solutions to marketing and endorsements - an opportunity that's waiting to be plugged.

It looks like the season of weddings. First, there was this whole frenzy around the Arun Nayar-Elizabeth Hurley wedding, and now there is this mad media rush around the Abhi-Ash (or whatever else they are calling it) wedding.

To capitalise on this wedding frenzy, Percept D'Mark (PDM) has launched a special wedding management agency called Wedding Management Services (WMS).

While PDM has been unofficially in the business of wedding management, it has now formalised the strategy. It had managed a grand wedding recently "" the Sahara India Parivar wedding in 2004 "" and also managed a few other high profile industrialist weddings.

Says Aditya Motwane, head, PDM-WMS, "We will look at capitalising on the opportunities that exist in the burgeoning middle-class weddings and at the NRI or international population looking at India as an exotic location."

The Indian wedding industry, which is currently estimated at Rs 55,000 crore, is all set to grow by 25 percent annually. The average minimum budget for an upper middle-class Indian wedding ceremony is anywhere between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 2 crore and is increasing with every passing day, while the upper class is known to spend upward of Rs 5 crore. So the potential is huge to make a dent in this space.

The target audience is the affluent class and the agency is pitching itself as a complete wedding solutions provider. Some of the services, which it plans to offer, are creative services like invitations and gifts.

Other services include consultancy for theme and decor planning for weddings, deciding the locations, travel services like hotel bookings, on-ground transport, security, getting all permissions and other services like having Bollywood performers, singers and other entertainment acts.

Though wedding planners have been there in the country, a full-fledged agency is a concept that is entirely new. But is the agency confident of getting business? "Yes," says Motwane, "weddings have always been huge in our country and people are looking to spend more on the function. We are confident of doing well in the business."

India has still to open to selling exclusive rights for celebrity weddings, and endorsements (for jewellers, designers and so so), which is a clear revenue model with the arrival of international gossip and society magazines in the country. What Percept will start with is advertising its services in magazines. The rest, hopefully, will follow.