KOCHI/MUMBAI (Commodity Online): Till now Indian women seeking to get married used to have the problem of manglik dosh, an astrological impact of the planet Mars which will cause problems for marriageable boys and girls, but things have changed fast in the past few months.

Brides and grooms are now more worried about the gold prices rather than the manglik dosh. Gold prices have crossed Rs 17,000 per 10 gm in India in November and the wedding season is peaking in India now.

In China also the wedding season is at its peak now and the Chinese brides and grooms are now embracing platinum instead of gold in a big way.

However, in India gold is god and Indians always celebrate festivals by buying gold. And, at weddings gold is a must. Indian brides wear a lot of gold on wedding day and their parents have to buy jewellery in a big way.

With the gold prices soaring to record highs, brides and parents are finding it tough to purchase gold ornaments for the wedding and they are resorting to other methods like renewing their old jewellery and going for lighter pieces.

This trend has also forced jewelers to change their methods to lure customers.

India is the biggest gold consumer in the world and it normally imports around 800 tonne gold every year.

Till now, Indian brides wanted their jewellery to be the biggest, but record gold prices are forcing them to compromise now.

While few women are prepared to trade down on the size of their purchases, some are turning to new designs that retain the bulk and glitz but use less of the precious metal.

Jewellers in Kochi, Mumbai, Kolkata and New Delhi said they are flooded with requests by clients for cheaper jewellery pieces. Clients come, select the design and tell jewellers to make it with less gold.

Big pieces of jewellery mean high gold content, but that is no longer affordable for Indian buyers. Indians are never happy with small, delicate designs. They need glossy, thick jewelry. So, one solution is to buy big pieces but designed differently with lower gold content.

Some jewellery manufacturers are importing technology and alloys from Europe to make ornaments using hollowing techniques that help them reduce gold content by up to 50 per cent.

Using the modern techniques, goldsmiths are trained to flatten 22-carat gold and then stuff it with an alloy that is a mix of copper and silver to make the ornament heavy.

Jewellers have purchased Italian machinery and hired foreign designers to work on Indian designs using electroforming and hollow techniques. Jewellers are investing over $100,000 to buy and install the new machinery.

The trend of using gold in smaller quantities picked up after 2004, when the price of the precious metal began rising.

Jewellery demand fell 42 per cent to 111.6 tonnes, while total demand, which comprises jewelry and retail investment demand, fell 49 percent to 137.6 tonnes.