Which Nakshatras Are Used for a Wedding Muhurtham, and Why Is Half of 2027 Closed?

Two questions arrive together in almost every first call. Which dates are auspicious, and why does the list have a four-month hole in it. The calendar answers the first. This page answers the second, and explains what the calendar is actually made of.

The eleven vivah nakshatras

A nakshatra is one of twenty-seven lunar mansions, the segment of sky the moon occupies on a given day. Eleven of them carry a vivah muhurtham in most South Indian traditions: Rohini, Mrigashira, Magha, Uttara Phalguni, Hasta, Swati, Anuradha, Mula, Uttara Ashadha, Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati.

Every cross-agreed 2027 date on our calendar falls on one of those eleven. Five of them, Rohini, Magha, Uttara Phalguni, Hasta and Swati, are the ones families ask for by name, usually because a grandparent married on one.

Two are contested. Mula and Jyeshtha are accepted by some purohits and avoided by others, which is a genuine difference of tradition rather than a mistake by either. If a date you like turns on one of those, raise it with your own purohit before you fall in love with it. In 2027, 24 April is the obvious example, running from Jyeshtha into Anuradha.

The nakshatra sets the day. Something else sets the hour

This is the part families most often misread, and it has practical consequences at the venue.

The nakshatra qualifies the day. The tithi, the weekday and the lagna then determine the hour within it. Two families holding the same date can therefore have muhurthams three hours apart at the same hotel, which is why a banquet manager cannot tell you your ceremony time from the date, and why a mandap build schedule cannot be finalised until the purohit has computed the lagna.

Some windows are also very short. On drikpanchang.com, 18 January 2027 is a few minutes around 9 pm. A date with a narrow window is entirely workable, but it changes the run of the day completely, and it needs to be known before the venue slot is chosen rather than after.

Chaturmas: the four-month hole

Chaturmas runs from Devshayani Ekadashi in mid-July to Prabodhini Ekadashi around 9 November 2027, and the panchang lists no vivah muhurtham across those four lunar months. The reasoning is that Vishnu sleeps through them, and the large samskaras wait for him to wake.

For Bengaluru, drikpanchang.com stacks two further blocks on top of it. Shukra asta, the period when Venus sits too close to the Sun to be visible, closes August. The Kanya solar month closes 16 September to 17 October. The result for 2027 is a clean, uncontested gap: 13 July to 9 November, with nothing on either source we cross-check. August, September and October 2026 closed the same way, so this is the normal shape of a year rather than an unusually bad one.

Guru asta, the same combustion rule applied to Jupiter, is checked in the same way and can close weeks in other years even outside Chaturmas. It is one reason a date that worked for a cousin two years ago may not appear on this year's list.

Kharmas, Meena and Holashtak

Kharmas is the Dhanur solar month, roughly 16 December to 14 January, when the Sun transits Sagittarius. Vivah is set aside across most of India for it. In 2027 that closes 1 to 14 January at the start of the year and 16 to 31 December at the end.

Drikpanchang.com applies the same solar-month reasoning to Meena masa, 15 March to 14 April 2027, which is why the Bengaluru list drops from 14 March straight to 18 April. Families treat Meena more loosely than Dhanur, so if there is a late-March date you want, that is a conversation to have with your purohit rather than a closed door.

Holashtak, the eight days before Holi in late March, is a North Indian observance that most South Indian families do not keep at all. For 2027 it is moot in Bangalore, since the whole of that window is already closed as Meena masa. It becomes relevant only in a mixed family, one side from Delhi or Jaipur and one from Mysore, and there the workable answer is a date that satisfies both calendars. February and the second half of April 2027 do that comfortably.

How the traditions differ

Not everyone works from the same calendar, which is why one family's list and another's do not overlap.

• Tamil families avoid Aadi (mid-July to mid-August), Purattasi (mid-September to mid-October) and Margazhi (mid-December to mid-January), and otherwise follow the Tamil panchangam, which can offer dates in weeks the North-style panchang closes.
• Kannada families broadly follow the Bengaluru panchang, with the family purohit reading the couple's charts for the lagna. The dhare and the rest of the ritual order are unchanged whichever date is chosen.
• Kerala Hindu families compute the muhurtham per family from the Malayalam calendar, so the pattern is monthly rather than a fixed list. The same Chaturmas and Dhanu gaps apply and the strongest months mirror Bangalore's.
• Kerala Christian and Muslim weddings, and Goan Catholic weddings, do not use the panchang at all. They are booked around the parish calendar, Lent and the monsoon, which is why a Goa church wedding in October is ordinary while a Goa Hindu wedding in October is rare.

The ritual sequence that sits inside the muhurtham window is a separate subject. Our South Indian Hindu wedding ceremony guide walks it ritual by ritual, and the Kannadiga version is on our Kannada wedding planner page.

How we book venues against the window

The date comes first and the venue follows it. We hold the muhurtham and work every other event backwards: reception the evening before or after, mehndi and haldi a day earlier, the family dinner before that.

On a cross-agreed weekend muhurtham in May or late November, the better-known Bangalore hotels and estates are held nine to twelve months out, and the Saturday-evening reception slot goes before the ceremony space does. So the hold goes in before decor or catering has been discussed at all.

Off-window dates, and weekdays inside the window, unlock the most flexibility. The same hall that is gone for 22 May 2027 is usually open, and better priced, on 19 May. Our fee is flat and you pay the venue directly at its own rate, which means we have no financial reason to steer you toward any particular date or property, and we will say plainly when a date you are attached to is going to cost you the venue you want.

Pick the muhurtham with your purohit, then bring it to us. The dates themselves, all 95 cross-agreed 2027 muhurthams for Bangalore with their nakshatras month by month, are on our 2027 wedding dates calendar.

Last updated: August 2026 · Reviewed by Panigrahana’s founding team.