Visas for a Destination Wedding in India 2026: A Host's Guide

The group chat that nobody warned you about#

Six months before the wedding, the venue is booked in Udaipur, the mehndi artist is confirmed, and the menu tasting is done. Then the WhatsApp group lights up. Your fiancé's university friends in Manchester want to know what visa they need. Your aunt in Toronto is asking the same. A cousin's American partner has never been to India and is nervous about the paperwork. And somewhere in the middle of it all, you realise your own fiancé — a British citizen with no Indian background — is asking the most important question of all: "Wait, what visa do I need to actually get married?"

Here is the first thing to tell everyone, and it saves a remarkable amount of panic: there is no such thing as a "wedding visa" for India. Nobody is applying for a special category, nobody needs a sponsorship letter from the Indian government, and the process for most guests is genuinely simple. Foreign guests attend a wedding on the ordinary e-Tourist visa, which covers tourism and visiting friends and relatives — which is, of course, exactly what attending a wedding is.

This guide is the host's cheat-sheet. It tells you which visa each type of guest needs, what your foreign fiancé needs to actually marry in India, and the two steps that trip people up at the last minute. Guests apply for their own e-Visa directly at indianvisaonline.gov.in — it is a free-standing government form, and nobody should be paying an intermediary for it.

The default answer for almost every guest: the e-Tourist visa#

For the overwhelming majority of your guest list — friends, foreign-citizen relatives, plus-ones — the answer is the e-Tourist visa. It is applied for online, there is no in-person appointment for most nationalities, and "visiting friends and relatives" is a stated purpose it covers. A wedding is a textbook use case.

The e-Tourist visa comes in a few durations, and which one a guest picks depends entirely on how long they are staying and whether they will be back.

What British-citizen guests actually pay#

Indian e-visa fees are reciprocal — set nationality by nationality — and the United Kingdom sits high in the table. Reading the UK row of the government's published schedule:

• 30-day e-Tourist — US$10 for arrivals April to June, US$25 July to March. Multiple entry, like every other tier.
• One-year e-Tourist — US$40.
• Five-year e-Tourist — US$484.

On top of any of these there is a 3% bank charge on card payments, or 4% via PayPal — not the 2.5% widely quoted. Confirm the live fee on the official portal before paying.

The honest takeaway for hosts: for a guest flying in for a week or two of festivities and nothing else, the 30-day option is almost always the right and cheapest choice. It is multiple entry, which is quietly useful at weddings, where it is common to dart across to a neighbouring country for a couple of days between the engagement and the ceremony and re-enter for the main event. (Note that any re-entry has to be by air or sea — e-Visas do not work at land borders.)

For a British guest, the 30-day visa costs US$10 arriving April–June and US$25 from July to March. The one-year is US$40. The five-year is US$484 — the fees are reciprocal, set nationality by nationality, and the UK sits high in the table, so the US$80 figure most travel sites quote does not apply to your British guests. For a one-off wedding, paying for five years of validity is not just wasted money; it is a lot of wasted money. Our companion guide on the Indian e-Visa for British citizens walks through the duration trade-off in detail.

Two things every single guest must do — visa or not#

Two requirements catch people out precisely because they sit outside the visa itself, so guests assume they are handled. They are not.

The second is the passport itself. Every guest's passport must be valid for at least six months beyond travel and have at least two blank pages. And critically, an e-Visa permits entry only through designated airports and seaports — not land borders. A guest planning to enter overland from Nepal or via a non-designated port on an e-Visa will be turned away. For a wedding, where everyone is flying into a major hub anyway, this rarely bites — but it is worth flagging to any adventurous guest combining the trip with regional travel. The list of permitted e-Visa entry gateways is worth sharing.

The special case: a foreign fiancé marrying in India#

This is the question that matters most, and the one with the most misunderstanding around it. If you are marrying a foreign citizen — say a British partner with no Indian origin — and the wedding is in India, here is the honest sequence.

There is no fiancé visa and no marriage-entry visa for India. Your fiancé does not apply for any special status to attend their own wedding. The path runs like this:

The thing to internalise is that the tourist visa is only the entry for the wedding. It is not a long-term status, and your new spouse should not try to live in India on rolling tourist visas. The proper route afterwards is the Entry (X) visa, and eventually OCI. Our dedicated guide on the Entry (X) visa for a foreign spouse and the OCI path covers that transition in full — it is essential reading for any couple in this position.

Choosing the right status for each guest#

Different guests need different things, and over-buying is common — people reach for the five-year visa "to be safe" when a 30-day would have done, at a sixth of the price. Here is the honest framing for a single guest, depending on their relationship to India.

The pattern is clear. For a one-off wedding trip, the cheap short visa wins. For a guest who travels to India a couple of times a year, a longer e-Tourist visa saves repeat applications. But for Indian-origin family — and especially children who will grow up visiting India — OCI is in a different league entirely: no visa ever again, lifelong multiple entry, and no recurring fee. If grandparents are bringing grandchildren who will be back every other year, sorting OCI for the children is the smartest long-game decision a family can make.

The host's pre-wedding visa checklist#

Hosting means herding a guest list through paperwork they have never seen. A little structure six to eight weeks out prevents a frantic week-of scramble.

• Sort guests into buckets — OCI holders (no visa), one-off attendees (30-day e-Tourist), and frequent visitors (one-year e-Tourist). This single triage answers most questions.
• Apply early. The portal, the photo and document specifications, and the upload rules trip people up — a rejected photo or a passport scan in the wrong format can cost days. Building in a buffer matters far more than people expect.
• Make the e-Arrival Card non-negotiable in your guest pack, with the 72-hour window spelled out.
• Check every passport for six months' validity and two blank pages, well before anyone books.
• Handle the fiancé route as its own project — tourist visa now, Entry (X) and OCI later, with the marriage certificate guarded carefully.

The most useful thing a host can do is send one message to the group chat with three lines in it: the official portal address, the 30-day tier, and the e-Arrival Card deadline. That prevents almost every problem on this page — and it prevents the other one, which is a guest wandering into a lookalike site that charges them £70 for a US$25 form.

DIY or get help — an honest call#

Plenty of confident, tech-comfortable guests will breeze through the e-Tourist application themselves in twenty minutes, and they should. The application is online and genuinely manageable for a straightforward case.

We do not sell Indian visas, so we have no interest in telling you otherwise: for guests, this really is a do-it-yourself job, and the honest advice is to send the portal link and a deadline.

Where we do get involved in weddings is the part that outlives the party. Guests of Indian origin — and, in time, a foreign spouse — are often eligible for OCI, which removes the visa question permanently: no per-trip application, no 180-day annual cap, and at £247.78 it costs less than a single five-year e-visa at UK rates. For a family that will now be flying to India for years, that is usually the more useful conversation than this one.

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Frequently asked questions#

Is there a special wedding visa for India? No. Foreign guests attend on an ordinary e-Tourist visa, which covers visiting friends and relatives. There is no wedding category and no sponsorship letter required.

Which e-visa tier should wedding guests buy? The 30-day tier for a one-off trip — US$10 for a British passport arriving April–June, US$25 July–March. Only guests who will genuinely return repeatedly should consider the one-year.

Do OCI-holding guests need a visa? No, but they do need the e-Arrival Card, filed online within 72 hours before landing. The portal states this applies to OCI cardholders as well as foreigners.

Can guests enter India overland on an e-Visa? No. E-Visas are valid at 33 airports and 19 seaports only. Any guest planning to arrive overland needs a traditional sticker visa.

How much is a five-year Indian e-visa for a British guest? US$484. The fees are reciprocal, so the US$80 figure quoted on most travel sites is the global default, not the British rate.

Should guests use an agent for their e-visa? No. Apply directly at indianvisaonline.gov.in. Sites adding a "processing fee" are charging for a form your guests can complete themselves.

This guide reflects Indian visa and entry requirements as observed by NriDirect in 2026. There is no dedicated wedding visa, and rules, fees and timelines — including the December 2025 reciprocity changes — change without notice. Verify current details on the official Indian visa portal↗ before applying. NriDirect is an independent UK agent and is not affiliated with VFS Global or the Indian High Commission.