Starter Kit. Idea 370 of 500. Cluster 18
Wedding services for Sri Lankans abroad who want to marry at home: everything from the visa letter to the drummers
The mechanism, from the book
1.5 million people abroad who know how rich countries work, and who send home money and little else.
The first step
Write a single price list for a complete wedding at home for 100 guests: the visa letters, the venue, the ceremony, the photographer, the caterer and the drummers, each supplier agreed in advance. Circulate it through two Sri Lankan associations abroad and ask couples to register interest with a date. One couple who asks for a quote for their date is your first lead.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan couple abroad who want to marry at home for the family's sake but cannot organise suppliers from abroad and fear being overcharged.
- What leaves today
- Wedding money spent at home now leaks through markups and middlemen; one honest organiser keeps it with local suppliers and builds a reputation that travels.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask which suppliers of events for visitors must be registered.
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask what a couple living abroad needs to register a marriage here.
Check before you spend
Marriage registration rules for couples living abroad, each supplier's agreement in writing, and how deposits are protected if the date changes.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a complete wedding for a hundred guests cost?
- How many couples register interest with a date?
- What deposit do suppliers ask to hold the date?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.