Now the Weddings: The Timeline From Here to February

The festival is over and the cards are on the table. The Indian wedding season runs from now to February, and almost everything that goes wrong in it goes wrong because of a date that was known months in advance and acted on in the last week.

If you are the bride

Now, not January. A bridal lehenga needs fitting, and fitting needs time and a body that is not being starved in the last fortnight. From first look to final fitting is comfortably six to eight weeks, and every good tailor in every city is at capacity from the end of November.

Riwayat is the bridal edit; lehengas is the wider one. Go and see it in a shop if you possibly can. A bridal lehenga is the one purchase in this catalogue that a photograph genuinely cannot decide for you — the weight of it on your shoulders is half the choice.

If you are the family

Four functions and usually more, and the trap is buying for each one separately as it comes. The mother and sisters of a bride are photographed as a group, in every frame, at every event, so decide the palette once now rather than four times in a panic.

The wedding collection, sangeet outfits and haldi and mehendi split by function.

If you are the guest

Buy three or four pieces that repeat across different crowds rather than one per invitation. What to wear to each function is in dressing as the guest.

The men, who have the shortest list and the longest lead time

A sherwani for the groom or the brother takes more alteration than anything a woman will buy — shoulders, sleeve, length — and the tailors are booked. Everyone else needs a kurta set and a jacket: RANJH menswear.

The deadlines that are actually real

• Blouses and alterations — three weeks before the date, not one. This is the one that ruins outfits.
• Bridal — six to eight weeks, plus two fittings.
• Anything shipped — order ten days out. December courier volumes are what they are.

Budget bands, if it helps to start there: 15–20,000, 20–25,000, 25–50,000.