The wedding season has arrived in Karachi with a bang. It usually coincides with the holiday season in the West.
As the locals in these countries prepare for the celebrations of Christmas and new year the immigrants depart to their native countries to participate in the weddings of close relatives and subsequently Karachi comes alive with these visitors who throng shopping centers, restaurants and of course tailors who are as busy in these days as they usually are with the demands of the locals during the celebrations of the two Eids.
A wedding nowadays is not cheap specially for the upper classes. In the early days of Pakistan there was a sense of austerity.
Large well-equipped wedding halls had not come into existence, nor professional photography made its way to capture the important moments of a wedding. Digital had not yet surfaced and at best a cousin or a close friend would use their personal camera to capture the moments as best as they could.
Religiously conservative there were hardly any additional functions apart from the wedding and valima. Not many people lived in multistoried apartments and mostly there were wide open empty spaces available to pitch tents close to the residences of the bride and groom where all the activity took place.
The food was cooked right there for the whole area to witness and the exotic aroma to tempt the entire neighbourhood. Bad luck if you were tempted by the aroma of the food being cooked but were not invited. It was also not necessary to have dinner at a wedding. If it was winter dry fruits and hot tea could be enough and the entire activities could be wound up before sunset.
In hot summer days there could be cold drinks replacing the hot tea and that would be enough for the guests.
It is a whole new ball game today where as far as expenditures are concerned sky is the limit. You start off with the wedding halls as pitching tents near your house is not feasible or in some areas not permitted by authorities.
Wedding halls depending on the locality, capacity and utilities range anywhere from fifty thousand to several lacs. One has to be careful as these halls are very rigid as some people found out in a fashionable area of the city.
A hall was booked for more than a few million by both parties separately for their functions. Unfortunately, someone close passed away and they had to postpone the wedding. They approached the hall management for cancellation of their event and refund of their money.
Nothing doing, said the hall management. We do not accept cancellations but you can give it to some other party on your own if you can find one in time. Not sure if the party recovered their money but this is how things work out in certain parts of the city. The main cost in a wedding is usually the catering.
In Karachi, the per-head costs can range between Rs.1000 and Rs.4500 depending on the menu selection.
There are of course those from the lower middle classes who cannot afford that and usually a standard dish like Biryani is sufficient Yes there are also overly lavish weddings with numerous dishes, including some exotic ones that cost an arm and a leg but they are exceptions. Those close to the business in catering, wedding planning and other associated activities tied to a wedding tell me that this year for some reason there is an unusually greater rush on wedding halls and those that forgot to hire one early for their function are running from pillar to post to find one that is available.
One such gentleman who can afford the most expensive but could not find one on the dates he wanted decided to change the whole format and have the wedding like old times in the afternoon with evening tea and the whole function to wind up before sun down. Hold your breath this might be the game-changer and if successful attract others to this revolutionary new idea of a wedding in the afternoon that could change the whole landscape of weddings in Karachi and beyond.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
The writer is a well-known columnist