In 2010, Shruti (played by Anushka Sharma) and Bittoo (played by Ranveer Singh) in Band Baaja Baaraat spent their days navigating Delhi on a secondhand scooter, armed with notepads and sheer jugaad to build their wedding-planning business, Shaadi Mubarak. Their biggest hurdles were sourcing vendors, negotiating with them, auditioning every cook, and physically visualising decor themes that existed in their clients’ heads.
If Shruti and Bittoo were launching Shaadi Mubarak today, the scooter might still be there, but the hustle would be minimal and hyper-charged by artificial intelligence.
AI has introduced speed and precision into extravagant Indian weddings that were once painstakingly manual. However, the AI revolution in India’s wedding ecosystem goes far beyond using tools like ChatGPT to search for lehenga inspiration, create Pinterest-style mood boards, or finalise the menu.
Indian couples are now using AI to create deeply immersive experiences like digitally recreating the presence of loved ones who are no longer alive. In a culture where the blessings of elders are paramount, couples are now using deepfake and voice-cloning technology to include deceased family members in their celebrations. Imagine a bride walking down the aisle to a personalised message recorded in her late grandfather’s recreated voice, or a family portrait where AI seamlessly integrates a lost loved one.
For tech-forward entrepreneurs, applying AI to a wedding isn’t just a trend but an operational necessity. Gayatri Agrawal, founder of ALTRD, views her wedding planning through a “systems” lens. Having run an AI company, she had an “AI-first ” approach to her wedding by default.
“A wedding has a lot of moving parts, and I saw it as another system that could be optimised,” Agrawal tells indianexpress.com. She notes that AI’s greatest gift is visualisation without the overwhelm. For her, a tool like Nano Banana was a lifesaver, allowing her to match jewellery with outfits that weren’t physically in the same room.
AI not for emotional choices
However, Agrawal draws a firm line at the “heart” of the event. She suggests that while AI should handle the “backend ops” and coordination to save time, the emotional choices must remain human. “I didn’t use AI for decision-making… I didn’t want to over-optimise something that’s meant to be felt,” she shares.
“I’d definitely recommend it, but with boundaries. Use AI for backend ops, coordination, visualisation, anything that saves time. But for moments, choices, and emotions, be fully present,” Agarwal says.
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If early AI tools focused on inspiration and visualisation, a new wave of platforms is tackling the most stressful part of Indian weddings: execution. Prakhar Jain, co-founder and CEO of Envito AI, positions his product as something fundamentally different from traditional planning tools. His AI assistant, Nayna AI, is designed to handle the “guest experience layer” of weddings, essentially acting as a central intelligence system that operates over WhatsApp.
“In Indian weddings, stress does not come from creating plans. It comes from executing them across hundreds of guests, multiple functions, and constant moving parts,” Jain explains.
Jain says that Nayna AI functions as a conversational assistant for guests. It responds instantly to queries, manages requests, and routes them to the appropriate organisers through a ticketing system. Guests can ask about travel, outfit suggestions, or event details, and receive real-time answers.
Jain says the system also collects RSVPs, manages arrivals and departures, coordinates room allocations and pickups, and sends targeted updates based on guest segments.
“Couples are no longer coordinating hundreds of micro-decisions,” Jain says. “Nayna AI executes them.”
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According to Jain, Envito AI has been deployed across more than 150 events, serving over 43,000 guests in collaboration with 30-plus wedding planners in just seven months. “Nayna AI does not prescribe culture,” Jain says, adding, “It executes what the hosts design, accurately and at scale.”
One of the most gruelling tasks for any Indian couple is the seating chart, a literal minefield of family politics and social hierarchies. Jaime, founder of SeatCanvas, explains that while AI is powerful, it cannot yet navigate the “Cold War” between two aunts.
The personalisation in a wedding comes from the couple because they know which aunt shouldn’t sit near which cousin,” he notes. Instead, he uses AI to handle the “manual” drudgery: fast guest imports, duplicate detection, and identifying empty seat clusters.
However, the challenge is “context impoverishment”. A spreadsheet doesn’t tell an AI that a bride’s divorced parents are on good terms or that two cousins haven’t spoken in years. “The judgment call about who sits next to grandma is going to be made by a human for a long time,” he said, highlighting that in weddings, people pay for “human attention and human judgment”.
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Shweta Ratanpura and Mithilesh Katkar of Studio Mish have found a way to use AI to enhance high-end customisation rather than replace it. They use AI to analyse long “how we met” stories from clients to extract keywords and emotional beats.
“We use AI to quickly put our ideas into something virtual and then share it,” Shweta says, explaining how AI-generated sketches help clients pick a creative direction faster than traditional pencil drawings. However, they ensure manual input at every stage to prevent the “generic output” that plagues many automated platforms.
AI for motif variations
For their venture, AI is a tool to replicate elements such as designing 20 different versions of a specific traditional motif, while keeping the soul of the design unique to the couple.
“While we would use AI in the process, we do not entirely rely on it for the idea creation. This is important to sort of maintain their choices, ideas, or aesthetics, because you know how AI can just create generic output, and it could be the same for everyone. So I know that a lot of people today would prefer to just get their illustrations or invites made on Canva or through an AI feature, where they can just create their illustration,” Ratanpura explains.
If logistics is one side of the story, creativity is the other, and here, AI is proving transformative. Rajesh Satankar, co-founder of Knotting Bells, describes AI as “absolutely integral” to modern wedding photography workflows. Tools like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom have dramatically reduced the time required for culling, colour correction, and retouching.
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“What once took days now happens with a prompt or a click,” he says. But the impact goes beyond efficiency. AI-powered design platforms like Canva are enabling photographers to create albums, social media content, and reels in minutes rather than days. This shift allows creative professionals to focus more on storytelling and less on repetitive tasks.
“Wedding photography is about real moments,” Satankar emphasises. “There’s a rawness people want to preserve.” One particularly moving example involved using AI to include a bride’s late grandparents in a family portrait. The result wasn’t just visually striking, but emotionally profound, illustrating how AI can move beyond utility into something deeply human.
“The bride wanted her grandparents who are no longer with us to be part of a family portrait. We worked with existing photographs, used Photoshop carefully, and placed them into the frame. When the family saw that image, it felt like they were truly there at the wedding,” Satankar says.
Nitin Arora of Nitin Arora Photography believes AI’s role is primarily efficiency. “If the emotion changes, it’s too much,” Arora says. He shared that he uses AI to clean up chaotic backgrounds, but draws the line at altering the reality of the moment.
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“If everyone starts using the same tools in the same way, everything starts looking similar,” Arora says.
Even the wedding soundtrack is evolving. DJs are using AI to analyse musical preferences, identify patterns, and experiment with custom mashups. However, celebrity DJ Krish explains, AI remains a support tool. “It helps me map preferences and experiment,” he says, “but reading a crowd is instinct.”
That instinct, knowing when to switch tracks or build energy, remains deeply human, especially in the unpredictable environment of a live wedding celebration. “Those calls happen in real time, often without thinking. Technology can assist, but it cannot feel the room the way a DJ does, he shares.
For startups building AI-driven wedding platforms, the goal is not to eliminate complexity but to make it manageable. Gowtham H N, CTO of It’s Forever, a company that builds digital wedding albums, points out that weddings involve multiple decision-makers and competing preferences. AI helps couples explore options quickly and iterate across themes, significantly reducing the time required for decision-making.
“It (AI) doesn’t hand you a finished answer, but it gets you to the right answer much faster. What used to require days of research and design exploration now comes together in a matter of hours,” he explains.
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Preserving personal meaning and nuance
As AI becomes more embedded in wedding planning, its psychological impact is increasingly relevant. Dr Rimpa Sarkar, PhD, of Sentier Wellness, Mumbai, suggests that AI can enhance a sense of control by simplifying decisions and reducing overwhelm. This can make the planning process smoother and more enjoyable. However, over-reliance on AI may subtly affect authenticity if decisions begin to feel driven by algorithms rather than personal meaning.
“When it supports the couple’s vision, it can enhance the experience. When it replaces personal involvement, it may create a sense of emotional distance,” Dr Sarkar explains.
Emphasising how AI tools can help reduce conflicts between couples and families during wedding planning, Dr Sarkar states that AI can act as a neutral reference point in decision-making.
However, it might also create new tensions among family members if they feel their emotions are being replaced by technology. “Weddings are not just logistical events; they are emotional and cultural experiences, so balance is important. Using AI as a support tool rather than a decision-maker can help maintain harmony,” the expert says.
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As the wedding industry continues to boom in the upcoming years, today’s planners and couples still need that “spark” of human connection, but they are no longer limited by manual labour.
