Destination Weddings and Domestic Tourism

 

Destination weddings, or destination functions of any sort, are amongst the biggest evolutions of package tours without the tours. In most cases they comprise of taking a flight plus some other form of transport to a resort or a hotel, attending expensive choreographed functions, and then returning back to base. Getting wasted appears to be, often, one of the core objectives. Trying to imitate a random Hindi movie is another aspirational here.

In almost all cases, all that this achieves is travel inside another tube, and food that tastes the same. In addition, your budget is likely to go totally out of shape on basics like drinking water and airport food, because those are not cheap. I have done a few destination weddings, in addition we also live in a second home sometimes in an Indian city which has a lot of destination weddings, so there is a wee bit of experience involved too.

Destination weddings abroad are something else again. Here I try to tell readers how a good quality destination wedding in India can fit into the 5000/- rupees per day per couple envelope of expenses. Organiser and invitees.

1) Find a location that is served well both by air as well as by train. That is not difficult in India, though the choice of railway stations and day of the week may need to be taken into account, if check-in and check-out dates are very specific. The primary tourist destinations are therefore out of the reckoning. However, with airports all over India now, alternate destinations with all the facilities are emerging.

2) A typical destination wedding is 3 nights. Keeping one day in the middle as a sort of "rest day" so that guests can do their own thing helps defray expenses for both the hosts as well as the guests. Eating out, for example, is often much cheaper than eating in the resort. And gives everyone an opportunity to do their own thing too.

3) Instead of an "open bar", make a deal with the hotel's bar that alcohol will be served on payment by the guests, but a reasonable discount is to be built in. This provides for a much larger choice as well as keeps costs low for everyone. Free booze tends to increase the per diem costs in many ways. On the other hand, consumption is sensible and controlled when people have to pay for their own booze.

4) Within Indian conditions, a few meals as "vegetarian only" is a brilliant idea, especially breakfast. People have usually over-eaten the night before, and it works very well for the budget, whether host pays or guest. And vegetarian in India is always safer anyways. I have written on this before too in this blog.

5) Try to select resorts which have good connections to the better public transport by road now available in many parts of India. Here, again, some States are better than others. Peninsular India, for example, is way ahead of other parts of India.

6) Keep a few days extra in hand before or after the wedding functions to do some independent travel. Question arises - what do you then do with the expensive jewelry being carried? Answer - don't carry it. Simple as that. Leave it at home. Losing expensive stuff whilst travelling is a huge risk globally.

With a bit of planning, destination weddings in India can easily fit into the 5000/- rupees per day per couple kind of costing, do ask if you have questions?