Naveena Vanamala sits very still as her makeup artist leans in close, carefully pressing tiny white dots of pigment in an arc above her brows on the most important day of her life. Her phone keeps ringing. Flowers for her hair are missing.
Normally the father of the bride handles problems with vendors, as part of his role as ceremony funder and host, but her father died six months ago, and now she’s making last-minute decisions about a Mumbai wedding she isn’t sure she can afford.
The 26-year-old social media marketing executive earns about $145 a month. Yet, what began as an already stretched wedding budget of $3,200 quickly doubled. She took out a bank loan. Her fiancé, who already had a home loan, borrowed against his house again.
“It wasn’t worth taking so much loan,” Vanamala says. “But we had no option. We had to do it.”
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