Foreigners keen to get married in the opulent and colorful style of Indian maharajas are heading in increasing numbers for Rajasthan, the desert state in northwest India, that boasts more princely families and fairy tale palaces than any other part of India.
Rajasthan has always been popular with tourists but tour operators say that it has now become a wedding destination for Europeans and Americans seeking a grandeur to make their marriages memorable.
"I get over 20 inquiries every month. Every month, at least four or five foreign couples get married here. They know we have a rich cultural heritage and they want the works -- all the rituals and ceremonies of a traditional Indian wedding such as the mehndi (henna ceremony) and sangeet (musical evening)," said Ankit Bhargava, director, Regal Weddings in Udaipur.
Bhargava, like other tour operators, is promoting Rajasthan as a unique venue where couples can enjoy a truly royal wedding with decorated elephants, camels and horses, ancient forts and palaces, big brass bands, processions, pathways lined with petals, liveried palace guards holding lances and flaming torches, swirling dancers, and fireworks.
A celebrity photographer couple -- Briton Nigel Parry, 43, who is based in New York and his American wife Melanie Dunea, 35 -- exchanged vows on New Year's Eve at Devi Garh Castle.
"It was magical, indescribable. I wore a traditional red silk bridal outfit and sat on a decorated elephant with my father. Our procession went on for 2km and had a band in it, horses, camels and folk dancers. I exchanged garlands with Nigel and we were showered with rose petals. The castle was totally lit up. It was a dream come true," said Dunea.
Saira Mehmood, a 30-year-old singer from London of Pakistani extraction, got married to her British fiance Stephen at Devi Garh last year. She chose the castle because she wanted the pageantry of an Indian wedding but without the turmoil of pleasing both families if the venue had been in London.
"We wanted a spectacular location and that's what we got. I drove in an open top red Chevrolet with guards, horses and camels alongside. It was an Indian fantasy, very moving and special," she said.
Stephen, who works in music PR, said Devi Garh "surpassed" all his expectations: "My wife-to-be had been eating up my brain about this place for months but she was right. It is the place to get married."
If weddings in Rajasthan are lavish, it's because India's maharajas know how to put on a great show. Insane extravagance used to be a hallmark of nearly all these families, from architecture, jewels, food and sex to the armies of servants employed in their palaces.
Their legendary extravagance used to dazzle even European royalty. The wedding of Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, for example, was so lavish that it made it into the Guinness Book of Records.
The erstwhile maharajas of Rajasthan have been entertaining tourists in royal style since 1971 when Indira Gandhi divested them of their titles, abolished the privy purse and demoted them to the rank of ordinary citizen of a democratic republic -- much to their chagrin.
Suddenly, they had to figure out the tricky business of earning a living. Most soon realised that the best way of earning a living was to turn their fabulous properties into heritage hotels. One example of a particularly successful prince-turned-hotelier is the Maharana of Mewar in Udaipur, Arvind Singh. With 1,500 years of history behind it, the house of Mewar is the oldest dynasty in the world and he is its 76th Maharana.
His palaces provide a majestic backdrop for weddings. "We can organize pageantry in a way that simply can't be done anywhere else. Just one palace alone offers so many different venues for different functions -- courtyards, pavilions, durbar halls, and rooftop terraces," said a marketing agent for Singh's HRH Group of Hotels.
Royal weddings don't come cheap. A five-day affair involving around 120 people at Shiv Niwas can cost approximately US$250,000. A four-night affair at Devigarh for 100 people could set you back over US$100,000.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS