India, Aug. 30 -- If Donald Trump has tariffs, India has weddings. The upcoming wedding season bodes well for the Indian economy, with the wedding industry pegged at $130 billion. Government data suggest that this industry, the second-largest in the country, is responsible for creating nearly one crore jobs. Such is the potential of the Indian wedding market that almost every sector caters to the life event of two individuals joining in matrimony.

Three cheers for the resilience of the Great Indian Wedding? Probably not.

Just like the unsavoury bits of the shaadi ka laddoo - and the unpredictability of its crumbling - horrors underlie these glitzy stats. Research shows that an average Indian family's expenditure on a wedding is about th...