Live wedding paintings are the new must-have at Indian weddings

5 min readNew DelhiJun 6, 2026 12:23 PM IST

First published on: Jun 6, 2026 at 12:19 PM IST

A newly-married couple are at their reception. In the background are floral decorations and guests milling about. Someone steers them toward an easel they have not noticed all night. “Oh my god”, the bride says; the groom laughs. He is at a loss for words. On the easel is a painting of them, mid-pheras.

An artist has been working on it all evening, observing the wedding ceremony, the guests, the family, the couple. Through the aunties rearranging the flower centrepieces, through the uncles who wandered over, squinted at the half-finished canvas and announced, “I think the nose is a little off”, through the children who came in waves. The artist stood through all of it, brush moving, unbothered, coaxing two faces out of white canvas.

A couple with their caricature drawn by Suraj Shah

Live wedding painting is slowly becoming one of the most sought-after additions at Indian weddings. Before finding its way to a mandap or a beach venue, it was an already doing the rounds in the US, the UK and Europe. It arrived in India the way most trends do now: through Instagram.

Smriti Goswami, a 29-year-old self-taught artist based in Goa, stumbled upon videos from international wedding markets during the pandemic. She did her first live wedding painting for her best friend in 2023, for free, and used the footage to build her brand, Art by Simmo. That reel reached 29 million views on Instagram. In her first year, she was booked for seven weddings.

But getting there was not simple. “Live wedding painting is a challenge. You have to complete the work in four or five hours, which normally takes three to four days. There are people constantly talking around you and you have to indulge them. You cannot work in isolation,” says Goswami. Such skill, she says, needs practice.

Aashi Jain learned it the hard way. The 28-year-old Fine Arts graduate from Delhi College of Art, soon realised that disco lighting is a painter’s nightmare, that acrylic dries faster on humid nights and random guests will insist you paint them too. She now carries her own lights and in winter, she brings a hairdryer.

This trend is finding its way even in smaller towns. Animessh Saorav from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, says his first live wedding was a swirl of panic. But four years on, he’s mastered the art of improvisation. “It’s not for people who have just started their career in art,” says the 30-year-old.

But everywhere the process follows a similar pattern. Artists arrive two to three hours earlier, they paint a background on the canvas and wait for the moment. Often, the moment to be painted is decided beforehand. It could be the first dance, exchanging the garlands or the pheras. They photograph the moment and then start painting. Acrylic is used as it dries faster and because the painting has to be delivered the same night. Some couples even request to add their family members, both deceased and alive, or their pets to the portrait. These artists charge anywhere upwards of Rs 1 lakh.

But caricaturists at weddings operate at a completely different pace. Suraj Shah, 27, who is finishing his BFA at Delhi College of Art, can illustrate a couple in 10 minutes, a solo portrait in five and 30 faces in three hours. It’s about reading the room, says Shashank Mishra, 23, a caricature artist from Lucknow. “While talking, I visualise things and make the cartoon accordingly. Like depicting the wife as someone dominant, so when they see it, they understand the underlying dynamics.”

Live wedding artists Varsha Nair and her husband Vivek Wagh

Varsha Nair and her husband Vivek Wagh, both 35, started out with commission paintings. “We started speed painting to understand whether this is something that can be done within a time frame,” Varsha recalls. The duo has also worked for celebrity weddings, including actor and influencer Prajakta Koli and actor Keerthy Suresh.

The game is in the surprise, the unexpected, the humour, the reading between the brush strokes. Bengaluru-based Ahana Kumar, who got married in December last year says. “Photos are on everybody’s phone. I just wanted something that captured the moment more beautifully.” Her advice to anyone considering it is, “Don’t bargain with them. You can’t put a value on the amount of effort they put in.” If uncertainty is the truth about marriage, live paintings put the creative spin to the beginning of this walk down the aisle.