KARACHI, April 28: A centre piece of large pink roses greets the guests visiting the Summer Wedding Extravaganza organised by the Dawn group of newspapers at the Pear Continental Hotel. Scheduled for three days, there is glitz and glamour on offer for all the hopeful brides and grooms, setting out on the marriage highway.

A fashion show on Thursday evening marked the beginning of the event which showcased trendy wedding attires including bold and flashy wedding gowns, lavish jewellery pieces and classic make up and hairstyling skills. The exhibition itself, which opened on Friday, has over 60 exhibitors comprising, wedding planners, designers, electrical equipment manufacturers, banks, jewellers, furniture makers, make-up artists, and caterers.

Offering the complete wedding package under one roof, the main aim of the display is to minimise the efforts of the families planning weddings by giving them the perfect shopping opportunity and the most cost effective solutions with special offers and discounts.

Elaborate marriage ceremonies have created a wedding industry where the couples embarking on a new life have specific requirements as per the modern trends, be it their bedroom or house furniture, their ‘pagri’, sherwani and gharara, the flower arrangements or the large amount of financing needed to fund their fancies and elaborate ceremonies. Caterers, which at one time were only responsible for supplying food have turned into prestigious wedding planners now offering their services for creating the magical ambience of a perfect wedding, complete with velvet drapes of the marquis and organza tablecloths for a sit down dinner complementing the enchanting dining setting.

With solutions to all these time consuming arrangements, the event offers a one-window operation where interested guests can begin their preparations by applying for the ‘wedding loan’ offered by banks who have also set up their stalls, and then going on to plan and shop for their big day.