By Alexandra King

For Indian wedding planner Sonal Shah, arranging to transport a live pachyderm from New England to a Manhattan hotel was all in a day’s work.

“The groom wanted to arrive at the ceremony on an elephant” she said, with a nonplussed tone.

Indian Wedding planner Sonal Shah makes some last minute adjustments to a Bride’s traditional wedding sari.

“This is New York, not New Delhi, but I managed it, and that’s what he got.”

For the past seven years, Shah, 32, has organized some of New York’s most lavish Indian weddings. And business is brisk. This means four-day events, hundreds of guests, thousand-dollar saris, and 22-karat yellow gold jewelry so heavy the bride can barely lift her head.

Shah estimates her high-end clients spend anywhere from $50,000 to more than $3 million on their dream day.

The city’s immigrant Indian population has more than doubled over the last 20 years. New York currently has the third largest Indian population in the country, making up 9.5 percent of the city’s residents. And now, during the traditional marriage season, from October to March, many of the children of these immigrants are getting married.

But for a growing number of prospective newlyweds in Queens, New York’s most populous Indian community, the economic downturn has led to adjustments that herald both a return to and a rejection of Indian marriage traditions. With the support of their parents, many are opting for a ritual religious service. Against tradition, however, they are choosing to hold these ceremonies in the city, rather than return to India.

Manu Khiantani, who has owned an Indian clothing store in Jackson Heights for 37 years, estimated that 10 years ago 70 to 80 percent of couples living in the area got married in India.

“Now it’s more like 30 percent,” he said.

For first-generation male immigrants, many of whom traveled to India to find a bride and  marry within a month, having a wedding on the subcontinent was cheaper. Prices were considerably lower and large-scale events could also be organized quickly, with halls assembled, flowers picked and food ordered in little less than a couple of weeks.

But their children do not need to leave the country to find a partner. Several members of the community have made a livelihood out of importing wedding items that their parents didn’t have access to. And, in a recession, it doesn’t make financial sense for some couples to fly all of their guests and family to India, when most of them live in the city.

Despite preferring the tradition of marrying at home, Khiantani regretted one aspect of his daughter’s 2006 wedding in Southern India which was attended by about 50 relatives from the U.S.

“It was more expensive to have my daughter married in India because we had to fly most of our family over there,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it again, because of the cost.”

For Jackson Heights travel agent Sharad Argawal, 52, who runs one of the many Indian travel agencies around the intersection of 74th Street and 37th Road, the trend for stay-at- home weddings is not  welcome news. Argawal said at least 70 percent of his clients  are flying back to India during wedding season to attend ceremonies, at an average cost of $1,200 per ticket.

“The flights are still full,” he said. “But I worry. So many boys and girls are getting married here, people will not need to fly as much.”

The decision by many couples to hold their weddings in the city rather than in India can lead to inter-generational tension. Wedding planner Sonal Shah has become used to dealing with the issue.

“It’s the number one cause of conflict,” she said.

Shah’s company has even introduced a clause in their contracts offering family mediation services as part of their wedding packages. Because of  arguments over location, she said, many couples are choosing to reject the tradition of having their parents pay for the ceremony.

“This, even more than the recession, is what is changing Indian weddings,” she said. “Parents save for years. Couples who don’t want their parents involved because they want to get married in the US, cannot afford an expensive ceremony.”

And, conversely, the need to budget leads to a more traditional, often more religious ceremony, with none of the trappings that wedding planners like Shah market to the parents of wealthier clients.

Last October at the Ganesh Hindu Temple in Flushing, Abi and Zahida, both in their late 20s, got married in a ceremony that cost just $250. It was a cold day, but the wedding hall was warm. A long red carpet led to a golden canopy where the couple sat. Women dressed in brightly colored saris fluffed their hair, and  the air was filled with the tinkling of bangles. As the priest performed the “kanyaa daanam,” a ritual in which the daughter is symbolically given over by her father to her husbands’ family, the bride wept. Her new mother in law handed her a tissue.

The couple paid for the wedding themselves.

The temple has seen a steady stream of weddings despite the economic downturn, with an average of three per month. The old fashioned service has been trimmed considerably, lasting an hour and a half, rather than a full day or more, but it still contains all the traditional ritual elements. The features of the more lavish affairs, including a bhangra dance team, ice sculptures and enormous numbers of guests are all markedly absent.

Towards the end of the wedding, the couple performed the ceremony of mangalyam, in which the groom ties a thin rope three times around the bride’s gold necklace.

Padmanabhan Ganapathy, 75, a community organizer at the temple and a guest at the wedding appreciated the simplicity of the pared-down service.

He gestured to his wife, Sundari, who smiled as she lifted a long neckchain. On the end was the same mangalyam he had tied on her at their wedding in India 50 years before.

“I tied that rope many years ago,” he said. “And it is still there. This is really what marriage is about for us.”