Niche Biz: Indian Wedding Planner

Neon Tommy:

Planning a wedding is never easy.

But with 500 guests, two conflicting cultures and an elephant to handle, things can get complicated pretty quickly.

In India, lavish wedding celebrations go on for weeks and guest lists top 1,000 — butthe country is full of vendors and planners who know the ropes.

In California, fiancés who want an Indian wedding don’t have that safety net. The state has the largest Indian population in the country, but planning a traditional Indian wedding is still much more difficult when most wedding planners are more familiar with white dresses and towering cakes.

Putting together days of ceremonies with intricate props and rituals requires a threshold for stress and attention to detail that only comes with years of experience.

A network of more than a dozen Indian wedding planners has developed in Southern California’s most densely-populated Indian areas — San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles County — to capitalize on this niche market and finesse the differences.