Coimbatore: The big fat wedding has taken a great step back after the demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000. Its ripple effect can still be seen as city-based wedding planners and decorators shares the issues they are facing.

“People who used to spend around Rs. 8 to 10 lakh on wedding decor have brought it down to Rs 3 to 5 lakh, as they are forced to use only white money. Requests for elaborate decor is coming down, people want something sober; people are changing their tastes accordingly,” Neena Kulkarni, Client Service Executive at Flora Weddings.

She further says, “To help out our clients we were still accepting old denominations. As far as payments to be made are concerned, we have 20 permanent labourers who have a company account, so paying them was not an issue but for temporary workers we transferred money to their supervisor.”

“As far as I have seen, the rich or VIP class people are not affected much in comparison to the people from upper middle class and middle class, who are finding it very difficult to give payments in cash. People are giving cheques at petrol bunks and getting cash to pay for wedding related expenses,” says Vinod Kumar, founder of Bamboo Events.

Shedding more light on the issue, Vinod says, “This industry is mostly cash-driven. Earlier we were able to plan a wedding within 20 days’ time but now we need at least 90 days to sort out who all we can pay online and what amount of cash we need to pay the labourers.”

But keeping the bigger picture in mind, event planners on the whole welcome the move as they think that the step taken by the government is definitely going to bring a positive change.

“To accept change is difficult but for a positive transformation facing such difficulty for the time being is worth it,” says Neena.