Share the big fat wedding experience - online

Jun 24, 2007, 5:15 GMT

Hyderabad, June 24 (IANS) If you are in the US and can't make it to your best friend's wedding in India, take heart. Here's a unique website that will take you through the precious moments of the marriage experience.

Moving beyond matchmaking, market leader Bharat Matrimony has launched Matrimony Diary, a first-of-its-kind service for couples to share their wedding experience with family and friends, no matter where they reside.

The free wedding site, www.matrimonydiary.com, which offers a free domain name with free hosting for one year, is aimed at helping couples invite their families and friends through e-invitations and keep them abreast of wedding preparations and events with stories, photographs - and even videos at a later date.

'This is the first of its kind wedding site in the world as we are offering free registration of domain names like raghavwedsrekha.com, snehasathish.com for one year,' Murugavel Janakiraman, founder and CEO of Bharat Matrimony, told IANS.

'Technology has revolutionised the way people marry. Marriage is an occasion that brings all your life's dreams come true. Families try to capture each of these memories in various ways like photographs, videos, wedding cards and each day becomes an interesting episode in the groom/bride's diary,' he said.

'It can cover every aspect of the marriage - from an introduction by the couple to anecdotes from family and friends. You can post photographs and even determine who gets to view your page. It's a fun and simple way of sharing wedding details such as the engagement, bridal shower, stag party and sending out e-invitations,' he said.

The offer is open only to those whose wedding is coming up within six months. It is not limited to only those who found their match through Bharat Matrimony.

The diary will be free for one year, after which the user can choose to continue using it by paying a fee of Rs.1,000 per year.

Janakiraman said though it costs $100 for the portal to maintain the site for one year, it was offering the service in order to continue the relationship with users who usually leave the portal once they find a partner.

'The users can choose from the various facilities and different templates we are offering. They can also choose to make the site public or private,' he said.

He said in the second phase they planned to add more features like wedding reminders and wedding planners for fund management.

The portal plans to tie up with jewellery shops, clothes stores, tourism departments and fast moving consumer goods, which can offer gift vouchers for couples registering with the diary.

The 10-year-old matchmaking portal, which has helped engineer more than a million marriages since its inception, offers its matchmaking services in nine languages.

Yahoo! and Canaan, a venture capital firm, invested $8.65 million last year in Bharat Matrimony, which is growing at a rate of more than 100 percent.

With 40 offices in 15 states in India and in the US, Dubai, the portal has over 50 percent market share of the Rs.1.5 billion online matrimony business in the country.

Chennai-based BharatMatrimony.com Private Limited also runs other portals like Indiaproperty.com, Clickjobs.com, Indiaautomobile.com and Indiapages.com.

(Mohammed Shafeeq can be contacted at shafeeq.mohammed@gmail.com)

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service