Welcome to the big fat sustainable Indian wedding! 

Over the last few years, sustainability has become a big buzz word in the wedding industry. Multiple wedding planners told Daybreak that couples are now increasingly asking for more ‘sustainable’ alternatives while planning their big day — from offsetting the carbon footprint of the event, to setting up compost pits in the middle of their wedding venues. 

This growing environmental consciousness makes sense. You see, as beautiful and fairytale-esque the typical Indian wedding is known to be, it is also infamously wasteful. 

But here’s the thing — while some couples may be thinking about ‘sustainability’ more than before, the numbers tell a whole different story. Indian weddings aren’t getting any smaller. They are bigger and more expensive than ever before. About Rs 6 lakh crore was spent on weddings in 2024. That’s a 40 per cent increase from the previous year. And that’s not all – data shows that one in every 100 of those weddings had a budget of over Rs 1 crore. 

So how does sustainability co-exist with the grandeur of the Indian wedding? And can it? Daybreak host Rahel Philipose speaks to Ashwin Malwade, founder of Greenmyna, a sustainable event planning company, and Anirudh Gupta, the co-founder of Climes, a climate tech company. 

Tune in. 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.