{"id":6916,"date":"2008-07-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/07\/01\/us-gets-a-taste-of-indian-wedding-spectaculars\/"},"modified":"2008-07-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-01T12:00:00","slug":"us-gets-a-taste-of-indian-wedding-spectaculars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/07\/01\/us-gets-a-taste-of-indian-wedding-spectaculars\/","title":{"rendered":"US Gets a Taste of Indian Wedding Spectaculars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/south_asia\/7477829.stm\">news.bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">Washington, DC, USA, July 1, 2008: Minnie, the elephant, is used to being the star. Traffic comes to a halt and heads turn when she walks down the street. And inviting her to your event can cost anything upwards of $8,500. She and other four-legged beauties are part of a booming wedding industry that caters to the ever-growing demands of rich Indians in the US.<\/p>\n<p>Manan Shah had a childhood dream of taking centre stage in his marriage procession &#8211; or baraat &#8211; on an elephant. A relative&#8217;s wedding in India where he saw an elephant carry the groom to the bride added to the fascination. &#8220;I knew it was almost a lifetime wish for him and so I decided to go for it despite the huge cost,&#8221; says his father Suresh Shah, who has lived in the US for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>Indian wedding planners have mushroomed all over the US. And so have supporting professionals like videographers, hair and make-up specialists, henna artists and so on. The music and dance must also be Bollywood inspired, with specialist DJs and choreographers.<\/p>\n<p>Midge Harmon says the second generation Indians have now reached the marriageable age and there&#8217;s a large number of young Indians who are in 20s and early 30s. &#8220;They are Americanized, but want to get married here in the traditional ways and so the support facilities have grown to service them,&#8221; she says. And one things for sure. As Sonal Shah puts it: &#8220;Marriage is one business with indefinite longevity.&#8221; <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>news.bbc.co.uk Washington, DC, USA, July 1, 2008: Minnie, the elephant, is used to being the star. Traffic comes to a,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}