Stream It or Skip It: ‘The Big Day’ on Netflix, a Reality Series That Takes Viewers Inside the Planning of Luxurious Indian Weddings

The Big Day (or as the show stylizes it, The BIG Day) takes a look at two lavish Indian weddings per episode, showing just how big the industry has gotten and how much brides, grooms and planners can stray from the traditional while still keeping what’s sacred intact. We’ve seen plenty of shows about the Indian industry of bringing people together to get married, but the weddings themselves create an entire industry by themselves.

THE BIG DAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of a massive fort that serves as a hotel in Bishangarh Village, in India’s Jaipur District.

The Gist: In the first episode, we see Divya and Aman, who have been together for 11 years (12, according to Aman; he doesn’t count the year in the middle where they broke up). They definitely want a wedding that reflects their values. It will be ostentatious, to be sure, but it isn’t going to be like the “showbiz” weddings that Divya mentions she’s seen over the past few years in India. They plan to get married in Jaipur, at the massive Alila Fort Bishangarh hotel, and their plan is to use sustainable materials that can be upcycled for use in the village and/or are biodegradable. And while Divya’s an exacting bride, she loves that items in her wedding will have a customized quality, imperfections and all.

Nikhita and Mukund, both of whom are from the Bay Area in California, actually fell in love when Nikhita’s sister married Mukund’s brother; during the planning stages, they spent so much time together that they fell for each other. Nikhita, a Silicon Valley exec, is fully in charge of her wedding planning, down to the last detail. They plan on getting married in Chennai, and it looks like no expense was spared, from the welcome party to the Mehndi ceremony to a Sangeet (night-before party) that is fashioned to look like a Bollywood movie theater. There are so many lights, fire effects, and tiny details that you’d think the wedding was taking place in Las Vegas and not Chennai.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take Indian Matchmaking, mix with Four Weddings, and take things up about 10 notches.

Our Take: Indian weddings are big, multi-day affairs that cost even average families upwards of six figures to pull off, whether they’re in India, the U.S., England or somewhere else. What The Big Day is trying to show is that modern Indian weddings take the traditions of the multi-day ceremony and modernize them, amping up the bling factor in the process.

The weddings we saw in the first episode were super-ridiculous, though we admired both couples’ desire to make it a memorable day for themselves and their guests. Actually, we admire a couple and a half; Mukund seemed to wisely leave all of the planning to Nikhita. We especially admired Divya and Aman’s desire to make as much of what they were doing as sustainable as possible.

But don’t mistake our admiration for the fact that both weddings were completely over-the-top, even by Indian standards. The Big Day feels more like one of those superficial TLC wedding shows like the aforementioned Four Weddings, albeit with nicer production values, than a show that dives into how the wedding industry in India has exploded in scale. Yes, it employs hundreds, if not thousands of people, but the weddings were seeing are ostentatious displays of wealth in areas that are exceedingly poor. None of that is explored.

We’re happy that a same-sex couple will be featured in the three-episode first season, that is an aspect of the Indian marriage “industry” that hasn’t gotten enough coverage. But the fact that there’s no commentary at all on how people are one-upping each other at the encouragement of the wedding-planning complex leaves us a little cold. But it all looks great, right?

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Fireworks go off as we see both couples together after their wedding ceremonies.

Sleeper Star: At first, Aman looked like a noncommittal goofball, but as the episode went on, we saw how he was just as on board with the planning as Divya was, and that he’s interested in a true partnership.

Most Pilot-y Line: The Mad Hatter-themed tea session that Nikhita set up was, um, well, we can’t even begin to describe how silly it was.

Our Call: STREAM IT. You won’t get an in-depth examination of the Indian wedding-industrial complex, but if you just want to look at over-the-top weddings where pretty people express their love for one another, The Big Day is a good way to pass 45 or so minutes.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Big Day On Netflix