Wedding industry in Hyderabad tied up in knots

Hyderabad: Amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic wedding industry had been hit straight in a row for the second consecutive year. Observing spike in Covid cases, many couples have minimized the grandeur wedding and thereby opted for rescheduling of events and had reduced the number of attendees at the wedding events.

With the majority of weddings either postponed or cancelled, the allied business establishments and employees including function halls, banquet halls, catering, cloth merchants, photography, flower sellers, decorators, marriage material suppliers, cooks, waiters and workers have been badly affected across the City.

According to reports, over 9,000 weddings take place across the city during the wedding season which usually begins after Ramazan and lasts before the monsoon, withat least 500 weddings daily. But observing the rising cases and ongoing second wave of deadly virus many families have opted to postpone or to delay the weddings till the lifting of lockdown. The families who do not want to put off the wedding have opted for a simple Nikah with family heads indoors.

As estimated city houses around 800 function halls which now wears a deserted, while some of them have also been converted into temporary Covid Care Centres.

"During the lockdown, the government put restrictions on large gatherings and allowed only 40 members to attend any function including marriage. With this, most of the families either postponed or cancelled marriages, which had an adverse impact on marriage halls. It is not wrong to say that not only function halls, but the business related to the weddings have been badly affected," said Baba Khan, an owner of the function hall at Old City.

There are hundreds of function halls that are closed and hardly have any bookings. It is wedding season for both Muslims and non-Muslims, but the marriages are rescheduled or cancelled. "Apart from the function halls, the workers, waiters, and tent house, and catering companies are facing difficulties for their livelihood," said Mayur, an owner of a tent house.

Usually, our business depends only on the marriage season and these two years of the pandemic had hit us hard and I hardly received any order for catering this year too," said Ustad Aijaz, a cook and owner of Aijaz Caters.

Similarly, even Qazi(men who calls out nikaah) face financial stress. Earlier we would perform at least 3 marriages in a day, but now due to lockdownwe are hardly performing one in three days, said Mohammed Shafiullah, a Qazi.

Earlier, for marriages, a large number of booking would be received days before the marriage for decorations and flowers for bride and groom, but now no decoration is being done,said Abdul Aijaz, a vendor at Gudimalkapur flower market.