Wednesday, 14 April 2021 | Purnima Bisht | Dehradun
The recent surge in Covid-19 has started to take a toll on the wedding business in Uttarakhand once again due to a surge in the number of positive cases. Some people have even started postponing and cancelling the weddings after the State government recently issued orders to limit the number of guests in wedding ceremonies. However many stated that it is too late for them to cancel the wedding ceremonies. This situation comes at a time when a large number of weddings are held on auspicious dates in April and May.
“We postponed my sister’s wedding last year when only 50 people were allowed in the wedding ceremonies. Since both my grandparents are over 80 years old, we did not want to risk their health too. We decided in January to have the wedding on May 7 in Rishikesh and have even paid over Rs one lakh as an advance payment for the venue in which we have already invited about 500 guests. Now the government has restricted the attendance to maximum 200 guests which, we highly doubt, would change by the first week of the next month,” said Dehradun resident Abhay Garg. He said that his family planned the wedding earlier this year after observing that the Covid cases had declined considerably and the condition would be better by the month of May. However, Garg said that so far, they do not plan to cancel the wedding.
Telling a similar tale, Ganga Bisht from Rudrapur said that she has made advance payments to caterers, decorators and banquet hall owners among others in February to book their services for his son’s wedding at the end of this month and she is sceptical that she would get her money back. “I have paid about Rs two lakh as the advance payments to book services for the wedding ceremonies of my son. We had thought that when the government is allowing lakhs of people in the Kumbh Mela, inviting 400 to 600 guests would not be a big deal in April. Though many of our guests who live in other states had already mentioned to us that they would not be able to attend the wedding due to the pandemic, we were expecting near about 500 guests in the wedding from Uttarakhand. Now even if we cancel the wedding, we would not get our deposit money back,” stated Bisht. However, many families who have wedding ceremonies planned for after few months opined that they have decided not to make grand arrangements for wedding celebrations as the covid situation is quite unpredictable.
Meanwhile, several owners of wedding venues stated that the wedding business was just getting into the track but the second wave of the pandemic has started to hit them again. However, many also expressed their gratitude towards the State government stating that the administration has just restricted the number of guests and did not ban the operation of wedding venues like last year. According to Alok Mittal from the Dehradun Mandap Keeper Association, the cancellation for wedding venues has started by some customers but this number is quite low right now. He said that though the limited number of guests would affect the livelihood of about 30,000 people associated with the wedding business in Dehradun alone, it is better to have something rather than nothing amid the pandemic like the last year.
