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"When Pinky Rangi got married in 1978, nearly a thousand people gathered in her parents\u2019 five-bedroom house in Long Island.\nThere were no wedding halls large enough to accommodate the number of guests that\u2019s requisite for a big, splashy Indian wedding. There were no Indian caterers, so Rangi\u2019s mother did all the cooking, using spices the family had brought over during trips back to India. There were no DJs well-versed in Bollywood, so the women sang and played tapes. Rangi\u2019s father asked a friend to provide a racehorse for the baraat, the groom\u2019s procession.\nAt that point, Rangi says her family was among only a handful of Indians in America. Her father emigrated to the U.S. in 1964 to open the Indian office at the World Fair.\nBut today, Rangi is helping her son Karan plan his big day. They considered a destination wedding in Greece or Turkey, but finally decided New York City would be more convenient for family members. Rangi is worried about the table settings and trimming the guest list. But she has a plethora of vendors to choose from, and the venues are all familiar with the ins and outs of Indian weddings, from the ceremonial fire to the horse for the baraat.\n\u201CI don\u2019t need to educate anyone. In fact they\u2019re teaching me,\u201D she says.\nThe Indian wedding industry in America is booming. Professor Devesh Kapur, director of University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Center for the Advanced Study of India, points out that the Indian community in the U.S. has grown enormously over the past few years. Members of the second generation want to combine Indian and American wedding traditions, which results in what he calls \u201Cthe big fat Indian\u201D wedding.\nPinky Rangi and her family were the forerunners of the Indian immigration wave. A 1924 act banned immigration from Asia, including India, to \u201Cpreserve the ideal of American homogeneity,\u201D according to the Department of State\u2019s Office of the Historian.\nThe 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act lifted this ban, but the barrier to entry was high. Indian immigrants had to be well educated to qualify for a green card. Still, thousands of middle-class Indians poured in, driven away by India\u2019s mounting economic problems and lured by America\u2019s educational and professional opportunities, Kapur says. The next wave of Indian immigrants in the 1990s came on H-1B visas, which require that applicants have a master\u2019s degree.\nToday, the children of these immigrants are in their 20s and 30s. Their average income is $88,000, compared to the overall American average of $50,000, according to the Pew Research Center. They are young; they are in love; they have money to spend. They also sit at the juncture of two cultures that fetishize weddings: American bridezillas and Indian Bollywood.\nThe average American wedding costs $29,000 and has 140 guests, according to TheKnot.com. The average cost of an Indian wedding in the U.S. is $65,000 with 500 guests, says Ruchir Mewawala, a wedding planner who specializes in Indian ceremonies. While hard data on the size of the Indian wedding industry is not easy to come by, he estimates that it\u2019s a $4 billion to $5 billion business and that is outpacing India\u2019s own industry, which is growing at about 25% to 30% a year.\nSunita Sadhnani, a wedding planner who does high-end events, pegs the average cost at $200,000. A typical Indian wedding has at least four events and requires 15 to 20 vendors. By comparison, an average American wedding normally consists of a ceremony and reception requiring four to seven vendors.\nIndian wedding ceremonies vary, and the rising number of mixed marriages has led to fusion ceremonies. However, a typical (if there is such a thing) Indian wedding in the U.S. usually includes four events. During the ladies sangeet, female relatives sing to the bride. Then the bride is decorated with henna during the mehndi ceremony. For the wedding, the groom rides to the venue on a horse or an elephant in a processional called the baraat. For Hindu weddings, vows are said over an open flame. Everything wraps up with a reception.\nIn the past, some of the features of Indian weddings\u2014say, an open flame, or the presence of an elephant or horse\u2014tripped up venue owners. Now, that\u2019s old hat in major metropolitan areas, where Indian populations are concentrated. Allan Kurtz, managing director of Gotham Hall, a favorite venue for Indian weddings in New York, says live animals didn\u2019t faze him, but the flame gave him some unease. \u201CIt was a concern originally, because if you\u2019ve never seen it, you envision a barn fire,\u201D he says. Now, he just gets an open-flame permit. \u201CIt\u2019s like having a large candle,\u201D he adds.\nThe challenge for brides and grooms now isn\u2019t throwing an Indian wedding\u2014it\u2019s about creating a unique one. Twenty years ago, Marc Schumacher launched Equishare Baraat Horses, which provides decorated horse for baraats. \u201CThe groom used to arrive in a limo and get on the horse and ride it to the venue,\u201D he said. \u201CNow, I lead the horse to a pier and the groom arrives by boat. Or I go to an open field and the groom arrives in a helicopter, or parachutes in.\u201D\nThe biggest trend is destination weddings. Mewawala spends a good part of his year traveling to Mexico, where there\u2019s a thriving industry for North American Indian weddings. In Canc\u00FAn, there are vendors who provide white horses dressed up for the baraat. While some families still fly out priests, caterers, and DJs, there\u2019s a healthy supply of options in Mexico, including a Sikh priest in Mexico City.\nDestination Indian weddings can ease some of the expense. Jessel Taank, 31, is the public relations director for HL Group in Los Angeles. She started planning a destination wedding in Mexico after she found the cost in California prohibitive\u2014$80,000 for just the reception. Now she\u2019s budgeting $100,000 for a four-day extravaganza in Mexico. Highlights include the groom arriving on jet skis and a reception in a cave at Xcaret Park, a Mayan archeological site.\nYet there\u2019s an irony to all the pomp and circumstance. While some of the brides and grooms are well-versed in the traditions, others know very little about Indian weddings and find themselves the central characters in a lavish event they don\u2019t understand.\nStill, many can&amp;#8217;t imagine doing anything differently. Ruchir Patel got his lawyer involved when his venue wouldn\u2019t let him bring in an elephant. Patel had a mostly American crowd of friends and says he knew little about Indian weddings, despite attending his cousins\u2019 as a child. \u201CI wouldn\u2019t want it any other way,\u201D he says. \u201CI always wanted to be part of that. I always wanted that for myself.\u201D"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://fortune.com/2014/08/08/indian-weddings/>