Veni. Wedi. Recce.

Young couples are making their pre-wedding searches occasions to celebrate and capture on camera...

The likes of Sofia Vergara and George Clooney may be the ones to have had idyllic destination weddings, but now young couples are slowly realising the importance of extravagant pre-wedding paraphernalia. And it has got them travelling far and wide in the lead up to the wedding and for quite sometime after it too. Whether it is to spend some time with the family, to shop for an authentic trousseau, to get away from the madding crowd or even get an engagement photograph shot — travelling around a wedding (but not for the wedding itself!) is the new trend that has emerged among city couples, their friends and family.

Taking bus rides to kick off their wedding shopping as the part of a long and honoured tradition, young couples today have found newer reasons to put on their travelling shoes. Vithika Agarwal, who forms one half of a popular wedding planning duo, says, “We recently planned the wedding of a couple who were tying the knot in Madurai but opted to do a special photoshoot in Mahabalipuram, for which we travelled to the temple city with a photographer. Travel is a real favourite for cross-cultural weddings as it gives couples a chance to know in-laws and shop with them. The saree shopping at Kanchipuram aside, a lot of weddings have begun to involve multiple destinations for the ceremonial demands themselves. For instance, we had a couple who had a small and private wedding at Jaipur but a 1,000 person reception at Vijaywada!”

Hari Nair, who runs a travel and holiday website, recognises the ostensible trend of travelling before and after weddings even though the wedding itself might not involve much travelling. He says, “For families where members are living apart from each other in different cities, or who have moved away from their ancestral homes, a wedding shopping spree in different cities is a perfect opportunity to bond with each other. We have seen couples travelling with their in-laws to get to know them before the wedding or travelling to see each other for a mini-getaway if they are living in separate cities in the buildup to the ceremony. Travel surrounding a wedding is no longer just about the honeymoon.”

For many young and busy city folk, however, nothing spells the end of pre-wedding jitters than a bachelor or bachelorette trip with friends. Dipika Varma, an IT consultant who recently got married was one to head out to Bali for a bachelorette. She says, “I had become a bridezilla and with a cross-religion and cross-cultural wedding on the cards, nothing could keep me calm. So my sister and friends took me to Bali where we had a whale of a time away from the madness. I came back rejuvenated and really don’t know how I would have coped with the mounting pressure without the getaway.”