It’s the perfect setting: sparkling blue waters, golden sands, a canopy fashioned out of beautiful flowers, soft music accentuated by the sound of crashing waves and a radiant bride and groom. Beach weddings are everyone’s dream. There’s something magical about partying under a sky full of stars and taking vows in an idyllic setting. And the East Coast Road is fast turning out to be everyone’s favourite venue for weddings, bridal ceremonies and parties.
Popular choice
According to J Pradeep Chandar, executive director, Marriage Colours, there has been a spike in the number of people looking to organise a wedding by the beach along the ECR in the last two years.
“In fact, our company alone does around four or five beach weddings a month during the peak season. From an industry perspective, there are close to 30 such weddings taking place each month. There’ve been quite a few inter-community and mixed race weddings held here. A lot of NRIs, especially, choose to host weddings on the ECR,” he says.
Deepa Kalukuri at her beach wedding in Chennai
Typically, the evenings are reserved for parties and sangeet . The décor, say wedding planners, usually includes fairy lights and canopies for these events. For the morning wedding, the family opts for flowers to bring in an element of tradition. “Yet, the décor for a beach wedding is starkly different from what one would opt for if it were taking place in a mandapam or a banquet hall. The expectations are very different when it comes to beach weddings; even if they are traditional affairs. No heavy gold pillars and traditional flowers. In fact, there are no fibre structures at all. Here the décor is more toned down and uses a pastel colour scheme,” says Pradhyumna T Venkat, founder of Marriage Colours.
He adds, that 70-80% of the beach weddings take place between Thiruvanmiyur and Mahabalipuram. “Of these about 30-40% are from Chennai and 50-60% of them are NRIs with roots here. Some of them are also mixed race weddings, where the couple would have already had a church wedding in their city abroad {for legal reasons} and opted to have a completely Indian ceremony here. They fly down friends from home and the aim is to provide them an Indian experience,” says Venkat.
Deepa Kalukuri at her beach wedding in Chennai
According to Shalini A Bhandari, founder, 3x Events, a lot of families from across the country too, are looking to organise weddings on the ECR. “It’s the new destination for them after Goa and Kerala. If there’s one hitch then it’s the trouble with the liquor license,” she says. Apart from the main wedding ceremony, the ECR is also a top choice for wedding-related functions, says Bhandari. “Only recently, we organised a wedding on ECR where the groom was from here and the bride from Mumbai and the couple flew down guests from across the world. It was quite a varied guest list and they had two days of just fun — parties and a reception — before moving to Goa for the main wedding ceremony 10 days later.” She adds that some couples also opt to have their anniversary parties along the beach these days.
Often the wedding parties choose to have their day ceremonies indoors if the weather is too hot, and move the party to the beach in the evenings when it is cooler. Take for instance, Deepa Kalukuri, who married in February this year. The media professional and her French beau opted to have a traditional South Indian haldi and mehendi at a farmhouse along the East Coast Road.
Saying it on the sands
“The wedding however, was right on the beach. I opted to have the dance floor there as well, along with a very traditional Indian reception, which followed the wedding ceremony. My husband is based in Chennai as well and it made sense for us to have the wedding here. We just wanted a nice tropical setting, so we chose the beach. We had a white and blue colour scheme; the idea was that we didn’t want the décor to take away from the sea. In fact, in almost all our pictures, the sea is in the background,” she says.
While they did have to keep time restrictions in mind (no music on the beach after 11 pm); the couple managed by scheduling the wedding at 4 pm. “It was a short Jewish ceremony replete with a chuppah {the canopy under which a Jewish wedding takes place}. We began the reception by about 6 pm and moved the party to a farmhouse after 11 pm. It was great fun; even the weather was perfect in February,” says Kalukuri. And were there any special instructions for their guests, since it was a beach wedding? “Not much. But we did hand out a lot of tissues to deal with the humidity, and of course no stilettos,” she smiles.
