2021 was a year of huge milestones for me. I completed my first book for publishing. Then conquered my first Himalayan trek. I got certified for Road vehicle functional safety at work. Later, played in my first Badminton tournament. And most importantly, I got married to Shreyas in a minimalist wedding.

Our families were immediately on board with our alliance. So it was up to us as to when and where we wanted to get married. We didn’t know the ‘how’ part but we knew we wanted it to be simple. Considering Corona times, it did not make sense to invite too many people anyway. And we both believed that an extravagant wedding is unnecessary. We could rather spend that money on a vacation later or set up the house for living together and hosting friends.

How we kept it simple

1. Set a reasonable budget – I say reasonable because a minimal budget is different for each person. Even twenty lakhs may be minimal to a big business owner. We(My husband and I) set out with a one lakh budget in mind and ended with around 1.2 Lakhs in total. Most people we know can’t believe it. You will see how in the upcoming key points.
2. Short guest list – We had 23 people present at our wedding including family and close friends. Corona guidelines allowed a max of 100 at the time. But we were not eager to invite too many people mainly because we wanted to have just the closest people at the event. The people who have been long enough in our lives to know us deeply well.
3. Opt for a venue that includes food – Temple wedding was a no brainer decision. It was a venue that gave us the option to conduct the ceremony as well as serve food right there. We took advice from our house owner who guided us to a suitable temple. The priest helped us decide on a date. The venue booking came with a caterer, decoration, tambula(traditional gift bag) for guests. A temple booking comes to be more efficient than any hotel or marriage hall because most temples can easily host up to 50 guests for ceremonies and food.
4. Online invitations – In today’s times, nobody cares about physical invites anymore. I used the Canva app to create a minimalist wedding invite. We emailed and whatsapped the invites and followed up with calls to these friends.
5. Traditional simple menu – The temple has a predecided menu which is a traditional vegetarian variety meal. It is elaborate enough to please most people. For those who guests who preferred non-vegetarian, we could always throw a party later at home. Fortunately, our friends were happy to eat the delicious food at the temple. There was a last-minute hiccup that the temple imposed dhoti to be worn by every male guest in the wedding. A couple of guests shied away from the lunch due to that. But every wedding has some guests leaving early anyway, so no offence taken.
6. Simple clothes – I come from a Bihari family and my husband is a Kannadiga. We chose to go with the Kannada ceremony because it is shorter and easier. A Kannada bride gets 8 to 10 sarees considering the one her mother gives and the groom side gives. I refused to receive those many sarees. I have no place to wear them to. So I got a saree and a traditional skirt from my side and three sarees from the groom side. I was sulking about 5 clothes until I was told that typically brides end up gathering 20 to 25 sarees in Kannada weddings. Thankfully, I escaped all that. My husband said no to too many clothes too. Got only the minimum required for the ceremony and after the ceremony.
7. Reusable jewellery – I got artificial jewellery(bangles, toe rings, hip band, earrings, necklace, maang tikka) for the wedding mostly online and a couple of earrings for other outfits to just mix and match. My family gifted the groom a gold chain and I received a gold mangalsutra. These were the only two new gold items we got. I reused my existing silver anklets and gold rings for the event.
8. Tailor stuff at home – Not everybody has this luxury but I do know to sew my clothes. So, I used this skill to alter or tailor some of my clothes. I got all my wedding blouses readymade and then altered them to fit me. It was easy to take care of the saree corners, sticking mirrors on a blouse for design, makiing a face mask for the wedding, altering petticoats and of course, prepping up the saree that I wore to the wedding myself. I have been participating in several plays since school. So, draping a Saree doesn’t scare me anymore. I am cool with it.
9. Shorter ceremony – A Kannada wedding typically entails 4 days of ceremonies. However, we picked the shortest and simplest version. I had a small mehndi(henna) ceremony at my house on previous evening and wedding was conducted next morning.
10. Reuse decorations – I got a couple of my friends to help out with some decorations at home. There was a minor decoration at the temple which was taken care of by the temple authorities themselves. At home, I got a combination of fresh and fake flowers for hair, rangoli, decorating the house. I freshened up some pillows, cushions and pooja shelves. There was some small stuff to take to the wedding venue mostly pooja related. (yellow thread, Chandan, sindoor, Archana plate)
11. Stay for guests at home – Most of our guests were from Bangalore except my family and another friend from Mumbai. I was able to accommodate my family of 5 at my home while my friend chose to stay with her arrangements. I had requested my owners for a temporary neighbouring flat as a backup but ended up not using it. So basically, no need arose for booking any stay for guests.
12. Keep venue nearby – The wedding venue was about 7km from my area. Bangalore is quite notorious for bad traffic. So it is wiser to avoid too much transport between the place of stay and the venue. It saved us a lot of hassle. Most people could come with their own vehicles, bikes or cabs.
13. Ask friends for photography and streaming – We requested a friend of ours to bring a DSLR for the wedding photos. We were lucky to have willing friends to support us. Given that my husband’s family could not be there for the wedding, we sought help from a friend to stream the event live on the phone to them.
14. Delegate what takes specialists – So far, I mentioned that all the arrangements were done by me, my husband or friends. But there were a couple of areas that I had to delegate. I hired a guy to apply mehndi on my hands and my family members. Later, I also took help from a nearby parlour for a day of pre grooming one week before the wedding and for hair-makeup on the day of the wedding.
15. Online gifts – Since we had only a few guests for this minimalist wedding, handling gifts was not major pain. Most people asked us what we wanted beforehand. We requested them to either skip gifts or give them as vouchers for us to use them the way we want. As far as the clothes for our families are concerned, we mostly asked them to buy beforehand and we paid later. In some cases, we asked them which colour theory liked and gifted accordingly. We were grateful that all of our family and friends gifted us vouchers mainly which we could utilise to set up our house comfortably immediately after the wedding.

Some of these tips may be familiar to you and some may be new. A marriage is a big deal to most people and families save all their lives to make it memorable. I hope this article inspires you to see that a wedding doesn’t have to be a money pit to be memorable. And you don’t have to throw away your entire life savings to please other people rather than enjoy with the few who matter.

Please leave a comment if this blog resonated with you.

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