Buying Gold for a Wedding: A Checklist for Families

A wedding purchase is unlike any other visit to a jewellery shop. The sums are large, the deadline is fixed, the decisions are shared between families, and almost nobody doing it has done it before. That combination is why sensible people end up making decisions at a counter that they would not make anywhere else.

What follows is a sequence. Taken in order, it removes most of the pressure.

Before you visit anyone

Set the budget in rupees, not in tola

This sounds like a small distinction and it is not. A budget in tola is a budget that moves with the gold rate, which means it is not a budget. Decide what you can spend, then find out what weight that buys at today's rate.

Agree who decides

Wedding jewellery involves two families and frequently a wide circle of relatives with views. Settle, privately and in advance, who has the final say on what. Shops are entirely used to families disagreeing in front of them, but the disagreements go better when someone is authorised to close them.

Write the list down

What pieces are required by your family's custom, and which are wanted rather than required. The distinction is where the budget is actually decided.

Choosing a shop

Ask what the making charges are before you look at anything. A shop that will not quote a range until you have fallen in love with a piece is telling you something about how the rest of the transaction will go.

Also ask about the buy-back and exchange terms, at the beginning. Not because you plan to sell, but because those terms tell you how the shop values its own work, and you want to know them while you still have the option of walking out.

At the counter

1. Check the purity marking on each piece, and ask whether it is hallmarked.
2. Watch the weighing. A scale should be visible to you and should be zeroed in front of you.
3. Ask for gross, stone and net weights separately on anything with stones in it.
4. Confirm the rate applied and the date it belongs to.
5. Get making charges and wastage as separate figures, and get them in writing before work starts, not after.

If you are ordering rather than buying from stock

Most bridal sets are made to order, so a few extra things apply.

• Get the design agreed on paper or in a photograph, attached to the order.
• Get the expected finished weight as a range, and agree what happens if the piece comes in heavier than the top of that range. This is the most common source of a wedding-season dispute.
• Get the delivery date in writing, and set it several days before you actually need the pieces.
• Keep the receipt for any advance paid, separately from the final bill.

Before you leave

Check that the bill carries the shop's registration details, the date, the itemised weights, the purity, the rate and the tax. Check the pieces against the list you wrote at home. Count them.

Then put the bill somewhere you will find it in ten years, because that is roughly when somebody will need it, and it will not be for a happy reason. Insurance claims, inheritance and resale all run on that piece of paper.

The single most useful thing a family can do is start six weeks earlier than they think they need to. Everything above is easier when nobody is in a hurry.