It’s 7 a.m. in a hotel ballroom in Jaipur, India. The bride and groom are dancing behind the D.J. console in the middle of a dance floor transformed into a cage of moody LED lights. Around them, the last of their 100 friends are still grooving. The party, which kicked off at 1 a.m. after their wedding reception, showed no signs of winding down.
“So many of our friends came with the intention of staying just for an hour or two, but partied with us till 9 in the morning,” said Kanak Kapadia, 28, a marketing professional who married Siddhant Sidhwani, 30, an entrepreneur, in a three-day celebration in the Rajasthani city in March.
For the finale event, the couple, who live in Dubai, turned the hotel ballroom into an intimate, underground dance music experience with a nightclub-style setup, inspired by the hugely popular global Boiler Room club series known for showcasing internationally acclaimed D.J.s performing in the center of a crowd. The event featured a nine-hour D.J. set by Krish Mulchandani, known as TBOM, one of India’s most in-demand wedding D.J.s, who performed surrounded by guests on all sides.
After-parties at Indian weddings were once relatively simple affairs, with guests swapping their formal wear for pajamas and hotel slippers. Now, the after-party is becoming a headline event in its own right, with elaborate, dance club-inspired celebrations being among the popular themes.
Saanya Sharma, a founder of Three Entertainment in Mumbai, said some couples are increasingly “going all out, curating festival-level private concerts,” often designed to go viral on social media. “Everyone wants to do something different, and bring experiences from their travels to the wedding,” Sharma said. Her company has produced events ranging from Boiler Room-inspired after-parties to Burning Man and grocery rave-themed events.
Arjun Shah, who goes by DJ AJ, is one of the most popular artists on the Indian wedding circuit and has played more than 150 such Boiler Room-themed after-parties since last March — from weddings in Mumbai to Cairo, with the Pyramids of Giza in the background.
“Sometimes, these are very meticulously planned as Boiler Rooms. But even when they aren’t, once the music shifts to melodic techno or Afro house, the crowd naturally gathers around the booth, and the vibe turns into one,” said Shah, adding that he has seen an increase in this trend over the past year.
When Anoushka Sabnani, 31, a child therapist, and Monish Sabnani, 33, an entrepreneur, who live in Hong Kong, married in Mumbai in April 2024, one part of their three-day celebration stole the show: an after-party event they called “Bombay Boiler,” inspired by the Boiler Room parties they attended together in Miami, New York and Mumbai.
“It’s very hard to come up with new wedding concepts — everyone has done everything,” Anoushka said. “But we hadn’t seen this before.”
At the welcome dinner, 250 guests received “tickets” to the late-night event. After midnight, they entered a ballroom at the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, transformed with red lighting and a D.J. console in the center of the dance floor.
“So much of the Indian wedding is about the family and parents. But we wanted to do this for ourselves and our friends,” Anoushka said. It was the intimacy of the setup that appealed to the couple. “We love how it gets everyone together — it’s really about immersing in the music, and the D.J. dancing with you.”
Couples aren’t skimping on budgets, either. Wedding planners estimate a basic Boiler Room-style setup starts at roughly $5,000. Costs can climb to between $15,000 and $50,000 or more with premium alcohol, elaborate production and international D.J.s.
To recreate an authentic experience, Sabnani and her husband enlisted the help of the Boiler Room Mumbai team to produce the party, complete with a GoPro mounted on the D.J. booth and multiple D.J.s, including OG Shez, TBOM, as well as an impromptu performance by the Indian rapper Shah Rule (who is also the groom’s cousin). The final set wrapped at 6 a.m.
Anushree Malaviya, 31, a lawyer, and Utsav Kedia, 30, a distiller, who split their time between New Delhi and Indore, hosted a poolside Boiler Room-inspired party at their destination wedding in Goa last March. They spent months finding a D.J. who could adapt the format.
“Some D.J.s were categorically against weddings because they didn’t want clients interfering with their sets,” Malaviya said. “We wanted the music to appeal to everyone.” The couple curated a playlist that included a mix of electronic dance music, commercial hits and Bollywood.
That’s the challenge of bringing the Boiler Room format to Indian weddings, Shah said. Unlike club crowds, wedding guests are often fairly diverse in both age and taste. “You have to be able to read the room and pivot,” he said.
The Houston-based couple Dr. Alisha Sadhwani Tyle, 29, a pediatrician, and Sujay Tyle, 32, a technology entrepreneur and co-owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, also made sure their playlist spanned generations at their three-day wedding celebrations at Fairmont Udaipur Palace in Udaipur, India, which coincided with New Year’s Eve last year.
The D.J.s at all three Boiler Room-themed after-parties balanced throwback hits for older relatives with crowd favorites from artists like Drake and Rihanna.
“At one point, I saw my aunt dancing up on the D.J. booth,” Alisha said. “Everyone really got into it.”
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