Panigrahana wedding data · Quarterly · Q3 2026
What Couples Are Planning — Q3 2026
The median couple writes to us 7 months before the month of their wedding (quartiles 3 and 13 months, n=75) — and 40% of them arrive on the page of one named venue rather than on a guide, a price page or the home page. Wedding planning in South India does not start with a budget. It starts with a place and a date.
256 enquiries reached panigrahana.com between 2026-07-01 and 2026-09-19. This report publishes shares of that set and nothing else: no cell below n=20 is published, and no query behind this page ever selected a name, a phone number, an email address or a message.
Where couples want to marry
Of 178 enquiries that named a destination, half point at the Karnataka belt — Bangalore itself plus the Coorg and hill drive-outs — and a fifth at Goa. The result worth noting is the last row: short-haul overseas (Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand) is now as large a block as Goa.
| Destination | Enquiries (n) | Share of those naming one |
|---|---|---|
| Karnataka belt — Bangalore, Coorg, the hill drive-outs | 91 | 51% |
| Goa | 34 | 19% |
| Short-haul overseas — Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand | 35 | 20% |
Suppressed, below the n=20 threshold: Kerala (n=17); nri / india (n=1). Kerala is a real part of our work and a small part of this quarter's enquiry set; publishing it at n=17 would be publishing noise.
Where the couple is writing from
Roughly one enquiry in four comes from a couple living outside India (25% of the 201 enquiries whose country is identifiable). North America is the largest single block. The country field is double-coded in the raw table — "IN" and "India", "US/CA" and "USA" — and is normalised before counting; without that step the overseas share is wrong by about fifteen per cent.
| Where the couple lives | Enquiries (n) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Living in India | 151 | 71% |
| Living outside India | 50 | 23% |
| Country not identified | 12 | 6% |
Inside the overseas block
| Region | Enquiries (n) | Share of overseas |
|---|---|---|
| North America (US, Canada) | 24 | 48% |
| Rest of the world (UK, Australia, Gulf, Europe, New Zealand) | 26 | 52% |
It matches the search data almost exactly: 31% of Search Console impressions on this property also come from outside India. See Wedding Search Trends.
How many guests
Only 63 of 256 enquiries state a guest count, because the field is optional on most forms — so this is the thinnest table here and it is published at two bands rather than five. Even so the split is clear: a clear majority of couples writing to us expect 200 guests or more. The "intimate wedding" framing that dominates trend pieces is not what our inbox looks like.
| Expected guests | Enquiries (n) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 200 guests | 26 | 41% |
| 200 guests or more | 37 | 59% |
Finer bands all fall below n=20 and are suppressed: under 100 (n=9), 100-199 (n=17), 350-599 (n=10), 600 and over (n=6). Enquiry-stage guest counts are intentions, not final lists.
How far ahead couples write
Where a wedding month is stated and parseable (n=75), the median gap between the enquiry and the wedding month is 7 months, with a quartile range of 3 to 13 months. A quarter of couples are writing less than three months out — which, for a Saturday in a muhurtham week, is already late. Compare it against the 2027 muhurtham calendar: the dense months are booked long before the median couple starts writing.
| Wedding window named | Enquiries (n) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The rest of 2026 (Aug–Dec) | 22 | 29% |
| First half of 2027 (Jan–Jun) | 23 | 31% |
| Second half of 2027 (Jul–Dec) | 21 | 28% |
Suppressed: 2028 or later (n=9). The wedding-date field is free text — most couples write a month name, not a date — so it is parsed to the first of the named month and nothing finer.
The page the enquiry starts on
This is the finding we did not expect to be so lopsided. 40% of all enquiries start on a named venue page or the venue directory — more than the home page, the contact page and every guide combined. Cost and pricing pages, the ones a studio is told to build, start 8%.
| Where the enquiry started | Enquiries (n) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| a named venue page or the venue directory | 102 | 40% |
| the home page | 48 | 19% |
| the contact page or a planning tool | 41 | 16% |
| a guide, comparison or other editorial page | 40 | 16% |
| a cost, pricing or budget page | 20 | 8% |
A further 5 enquiries fall in categories below n=20 (decor and design pages, NRI pages) and are suppressed rather than listed.
Methodology and privacy
Source: the web_enquiries table behind panigrahana.com's enquiry forms, queried read-only through the Supabase management API by scripts/pull-couples-planning.py. Window: 2026-07-01 to 2026-09-19, brand panigrahana. Rows flagged as spam, rows whose source contains "route-test" and the monitoring canary row are excluded. 256 enquiries remain; 178 name a destination, 213 carry an identifiable country, 67 state a guest count and 115 name a wedding date.
Every statement is a GROUP BY aggregate. No query behind this page selects a name, phone number, email address, message body, IP hash or raw payload, and no row-level record leaves the database. Any cell holding fewer than 20 enquiries is suppressed and named as suppressed rather than dropped silently, which is why Kerala and the finer guest bands appear as text and not as rows.
What this is not: a market. It is one studio's inbox, shaped by the pages we publish and the places we work. Enquiry-stage guest counts and dates are intentions, not outcomes. The table begins on 26 June 2026, so no year-on-year comparison is possible before Q3 2027, and we will not manufacture one. Budget band is collected but not published: budget_band — 26 rows across 8 spellings in the whole table, three of them per-plate answers leaking from a catering form. Not queried, not published.
Questions about this dataset
How far ahead do couples start planning a South Indian wedding?
On our enquiry data, the median couple writes 7 months before the month of the wedding, with a quartile range of 3 to 13 months (n=75). A quarter are writing less than three months out, which for a Saturday inside a muhurtham week is already late.
Where do couples enquiring about South Indian weddings want to marry?
Of 178 enquiries naming a destination in Q3 2026, 51% named the Karnataka belt — Bangalore plus the Coorg and hill drive-outs — 19% named Goa and 20% named a short-haul overseas destination (Sri Lanka, Bali or Thailand). Kerala sat below our n=20 publication threshold this quarter.
How many enquiries come from couples living abroad?
About one in four — 25% of the 201 enquiries whose country is identifiable. North America is the largest single block, ahead of the UK, Australia and the Gulf combined.
Is any personal data published here?
None. Every figure is a GROUP BY aggregate; no query selects a name, phone number, email address, message, IP hash or raw payload, and any cell with fewer than 20 enquiries is suppressed and said to be suppressed. The CSV carries counts and shares only.
Why is there no budget data in this report?
Because the field is not yet usable: 26 rows across 8 spellings in the whole table, three of them per-plate answers leaking from a catering form. Not queried, not published. We would rather omit it than publish a number from 26 rows with three of them answering a different question.
Cite this
Everything here is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Copy it, adapt it, chart it, sell something built on it — the only condition is a credit and, where the medium allows, a link.
Suggested citation: Panigrahana Weddings (2026). What Couples Are Planning, South India, Q3 2026 [dataset]. https://panigrahana.com/what-couples-are-planning-2026-q3.html · Corrections and data requests: info@panigrahana.com. Press contact: Panigrahana Weddings, info@panigrahana.com, +91 77669 40021.
Add your wedding to next quarter's numbers
Tell us the month you are circling and the guest count you expect. You will get a straight answer about what is open and what it costs — and your enquiry becomes one anonymous row in the next edition of this report.