The Indian wedding industry has traditionally been driven by relationships, creativity and extensive on-ground coordination. But as weddings become increasingly elaborate and guest expectations continue to evolve, technology is beginning to play a larger role in how celebrations are planned, managed and executed. From vendor coordination and budgets to guest management and real-time communication, WeddingTech is emerging as a critical enabler for an industry that has long relied on fragmented processes.
For Dheera & Khurram, Founders of Parinaya Sutra, the move into WeddingTech is rooted in years of first-hand experience of the complexities involved in delivering weddings. Having built Parinaya Sutra into a wedding planning business that has brought the vision of more than 100 couples to life across the globe, the founders have now extended their expertise into the digital space with ShopShaadi.com.
Their approach is not about replacing the human element that makes weddings meaningful, but about using technology to bring greater structure, transparency and predictability to the planning process. In this conversation with EVENTFAQS Media, Dheera & Khurram discuss the operational challenges they witnessed firsthand, the role automation and AI can play in wedding planning, the importance of creating a connected digital ecosystem, and why the future of WeddingTech could be about making professional planning more accessible without making celebrations feel less personal.
1. Having built your career in the wedding industry through Parinaya Sutra and now entered the WeddingTech space with ShopShaadi, how has your journey shaped your understanding of where technology can create the most meaningful change in wedding and event planning?
Building Parinaya Sutra has given us a very detailed ground-level understanding of what actually goes into creating a wedding. We started with a passion for creativity and design, and over the years have had the privilege of bringing the vision of more than 100 couples to life across the globe. But alongside the beautiful celebrations, we also saw the enormous amount of coordination, follow-ups, negotiations and human intervention required to make a wedding work seamlessly.
Covid was a particularly defining moment for us. It made us realise how uncertain life can be and strengthened a belief that everyone deserves the opportunity to celebrate their dream wedding. At the same time, we recognised that professional wedding planning was often sidelined because of the added cost burden to the families involved, especially for mid scale weddings.
That led us to create ShopShaadi.com with a very simple thought: professional planning should not necessarily be a luxury.
We believe technology can create the most meaningful change by bringing structure, transparency and accountability to an industry that has traditionally been highly fragmented. It can standardise processes, make information accessible, help couples track progress and bring greater predictability to costs and deliverables.
For us, technology isn’t about replacing the human element. It is about removing the uncertainty and administrative chaos around the celebration, so that the human element can become even more meaningful.
2. Indian wedding planning still involves an enormous amount of manual coordination. As automation becomes more sophisticated, which repetitive tasks should technology take over first, and where must human judgment remain irreplaceable?
There are several parts of wedding planning that are extremely time-consuming but don’t necessarily require human creativity—vendor follow-ups, quotations, comparisons, payment schedules, checklists, reminders, RSVP tracking, guest communication and progress updates, for example.
These are precisely the areas where automation can make a tremendous difference. If technology can ensure that the right information reaches the right person at the right time, planners can spend their energy on what they do best: problem-solving, creative thoughts and creating experiences.
But there is a very distinct line.
Human judgment should remain at the heart of weddings.
Understanding a couple’s personality, knowing when to push a creative idea and when to step back, managing family dynamics, managing expectations, making decisions when something unexpected happens and creating the emotional nuances of a celebration cannot be reduced to an algorithm.
A wedding isn’t simply a project with a timeline and a budget. It is an emotional milestone involving families, relationships and personalities. Technology should take care of the repetitive and quantifiable work; people should continue to take care of the relationships and the experience.
3. From weddings to large-scale events, the industry often operates through a fragmented mix of WhatsApp chats, spreadsheets and specialised tools. What would it take to build a truly connected digital ecosystem where teams, vendors, clients and guests can work from the same source of information?
The biggest opportunity is to create a single source of truth for an event.
Today, critical information can sit across WhatsApp conversations, spreadsheets, emails, invoices and individual vendor systems. That creates gaps in communication and, more importantly, creates room for things to be misunderstood or missed.
A truly connected ecosystem would bring planning, vendor management, budgets, timelines, guest information, deliverables and communication into one structured environment. Everyone should be able to access the information relevant to them, while the planner or client retains visibility of the bigger picture. It can be in the form of a single AI Agent which takes all the information and updates from various stakeholders, compiles them analyses them and predicts and plans. We are already working on something similar.
The challenge, however, is not simply building another software tool. It is understanding the way the wedding industry actually works and designing technology around those workflows.
That is where our experience with Parinaya Sutra becomes extremely valuable. We have lived the problems before trying to build solutions for them.
The future, in my view, is not about having more tools. It is about having fewer connected tools that communicate with each other and give everyone clarity.
4. Guest management is emerging as one of WeddingTech’s most promising areas, from automated RSVPs and personalised communication to accommodation and real-time updates. How can technology improve the guest experience without making a highly personal celebration feel impersonal?
The key is to use technology to make the experience more personal, not less.
Guests don’t want to feel like they are interacting with a system. They want to feel looked after. Technology should work quietly in the background to make that happen.
For example, automated RSVPs, personalised itineraries, accommodation information, travel updates and real-time notifications can eliminate a huge amount of confusion for guests. But the communication should still reflect the personality of the couple and the nature of the celebration.
There is a difference between automation and personalisation.
Automation is about making processes efficient. Personalisation is about making people feel seen.
If technology can tell us that a guest has arrived, that their room is ready, that their transfer is waiting or that an event has moved to another venue—without the guest having to chase someone for information—that is actually creating a warmer experience.
Ultimately, the best technology in weddings should be almost invisible. The guest should experience the hospitality, not the technology behind it.
5. As AI and automation begin reshaping weddings and live events, what do you believe will be the next real breakthrough for the industry? How is ShopShaadi preparing for the future of digital planning and event management?
I believe the next breakthrough will be the move from technology that simply records and manages information to technology that understands it and acts on it.
AI will increasingly be able to identify gaps, predict requirements, flag potential problems, recommend solutions and automate decisions around the operational side of an event. Imagine a system that doesn’t just tell you that a task is pending, but understands its impact on the entire wedding and proactively alerts the relevant people before it becomes a problem.
That is where the real potential lies.
With ShopShaadi, our objective is to build towards a future where professional wedding planning becomes more accessible, measurable and transparent. We are looking at technology not just as a booking platform, but as an ecosystem that can support the entire journey—from planning and vendor coordination to guest management and execution.
Parinaya Sutra will continue to represent the highly customised, luxury end of wedding planning, where every detail is crafted around the individual couple, and a dedicated team delivers the experience on the ground.
ShopShaadi is our attempt to take the knowledge and discipline we have acquired through that experience and make it scalable and accessible to a much wider audience.
Because ultimately, the future of WeddingTech isn’t about making weddings robotic. It is about making them more predictable, transparent and stress-free—while leaving more room for what weddings are really about: people, emotions and memories.
The evolution of WeddingTech, as Dheera & Khurram see it, is therefore less about digitising weddings for the sake of technology and more about solving the operational complexity that sits behind them. By bringing automation to repetitive processes, creating connected systems and using AI to move from simply tracking information to anticipating requirements, technology can potentially transform how celebrations are managed.
At the same time, their experience with Parinaya Sutra reinforces an important distinction: efficiency does not have to come at the cost of emotion. If technology can remove the administrative burden, improve transparency and give planners, couples, vendors and guests greater clarity, it can ultimately create more space for creativity, hospitality and human connection.
With Parinaya Sutra continuing to focus on bespoke luxury celebrations and ShopShaadi working towards making structured wedding planning more scalable and accessible, their journey reflects a broader shift within the industry, one where technology is increasingly becoming the infrastructure behind the experience, rather than the experience itself.
