Somewhere between choosing the venue and arguing over the guest list, more couples are asking a question that might have sounded rebellious a generation ago: “Do we actually want to do this?”
It could be kanyadaan, a 1,000-person guest list or a week packed with functions. For a generation that loves tradition but is also happy to question it, weddings are becoming less about following a script and more about choosing what feels right.
This isn’t about rejecting tradition. Couples still want the pheras, family blessings, beautiful clothes and all the chaos. They’re just getting pickier about what stays.
Nikita Dubey Bahukhandi, founder of Shubhtithi Weddings remembers a bride who consciously chose not to have kanyadaan. For her, the idea of being given away did not make sense. More than that, she did not want her parents to feel as though they were giving their daughter away.
The family found their own way around it. Her parents held her hand, placed it in the groom’s and stood beside the couple as they made their vows. The bride’s sentiment was simple. “I will always be their daughter, and their home will always be my home.”
It is a small alteration, but it says a lot about where weddings are headed. The ritual was not thrown out because it was old. It was changed because its meaning no longer felt quite right for this particular family.
For Nikita, that is what makes the shift so meaningful. “It wasn’t about rejecting tradition. It was about changing a ritual so that it reflected what the family genuinely believed.”
There is a growing curiosity around the ceremony itself. Couples are meeting their panditji beforehand, sometimes virtually, and asking what exactly they are going to say, promise and do.
Nikita recalls one couple who spent considerable time discussing the ceremony with their panditji. They wanted to understand the commitments they were making rather than repeat vows simply because they were part of a traditional wedding.
Their thoughts stayed with her. “We really want to understand the commitment we’re making to each other. We don’t want to say these things just because it’s part of the ceremony or because there’s an audience watching.”
It is an easy detail to overlook, but it changes the mood of the ceremony. Instead of waiting for the next instruction, the couple knows what is happening and, more importantly, why it matters to them.
According to Chetan Vohra, CEO & Co-founder, Wedding Line, the biggest change he is seeing is actually the guest list. Couples are increasingly choosing intimate celebrations of 50, 70 or 100 people over the thousand-guest wedding.
“They don't want the world and their cousins to be there,” he says.
There is something wonderfully practical about the idea. Fewer people means more time with those who are actually part of the couple’s life. There is less pressure to turn every function into a production and less time spent making the rounds of tables filled with people the couple may barely know.
Chetan also sees families becoming more open to change. Even grandparents, he says, can be surprisingly adaptive. “Grandparents today are a lot younger. They’re pretty cool, have seen the 80s and the 90s and they’re much more like, yeah, screw it, we don’t need to do this function.”
The wedding does not have to become smaller for the sake of being fashionable. It can simply become smaller because the couple wants to spend the day with the people they actually love.
For some couples, the groom arriving with a full procession of dancing relatives, dhols and a DJ truck, is still half the fun. For others, it simply does not feel like them.
That distinction is increasingly enough. Some couples are choosing to skip the baraat altogether, while others are changing the entrance or walking into the ceremony together. The same thinking is making its way into the sangeet. If you love rehearsing with your cousins at midnight, wonderful. If the thought makes you want to elope before the wedding, you are allowed to skip it.
The point is not that these traditions are disappearing. They are becoming optional.