Gold is unaffordable so South Asian brides turn to one gram substitutes
Uzma Bashir sleeps most nights with her phone beside her pillow. She often wakes, not to check her messages, but she is getting married in the summer and is monitoring the price of gold.
“In [Indian-administered] Kashmir, gold is not just an ornament, it is dignity. It determines how you will be treated in your in-laws’ home,” said the 29-year-old, an accountant at a consultancy firm in the region’s main city of Srinagar.
Bashir makes less than $100 a month. She had hoped to buy her wedding jewellery with her own earnings to avoid burdening her parents.
Across South Asia, where patriarchy often defines weddings, gold has long travelled with a bride into her new home, not just as an ornament, but also as protection from harassment – and even violence – as in-laws often demand a hefty dowry from the bride’s family.
“How much gold a woman owns often becomes equal to how she will be valued,” Bashir told Al Jazeera. “My parents have already done enough for me. But I can’t afford even a single ring. It costs nearly three months of my salary”.
‘Dramatic shift’
Record gold prices this year have hit jewellery purchases across South Asia, with the precious metal hitting a high of $5,595 per ounce on January 29 and currently trading at around $4,861.
As India – the world’s second-largest consumer of gold – last weekend celebrated the popular gold-buying Hindu festival of Akshaya Tritiya, gold futures closed at $1,670 per 10 grams – 63 percent higher than last year’s festival.The World Gold Council says demand for gold jewellery in India fell by 24 percent in 2025 compared to the year before.
The surge in prices has also affected the way people plan their weddings, as jewellers report more and more customers abandoning pure gold and turning instead to imitation jewellery, gold-plated ornaments or lower-carat alternatives.
Customers such as Uzma Bashir, who discovered a concept called “one-gram gold jewellery” – ornaments made from base metals but coated with a thin layer of 24-carat gold.
“For me, it has emerged as a lifesaver,” she said. “Now I can wear it on my wedding day and no one would point a finger”.
Many families across South Asia are also making that choice.
Fatima Begum, who lives in Laxmi Nagar, a dense working-class neighbourhood in New Delhi, is checking out stores at the bustling Karol Bagh market, where dozens of shops specialise in imitation jewellery.
The mother of five children is looking for a shop selling one-gram gold.
“How much gold can a middle-class family living in New Delhi really afford?” she asked. “My youngest daughter is getting married and I’m trying to reduce the cost of the wedding by replacing real gold jewellery with one-gram gold. I did the same when my eldest daughter got married”.
Fatima said when she got married in 1996, her father gave her nearly 60 grams of gold, apart from other gifts as part of her dowry. “Today, I cannot give even half of that to my daughters,” she told Al Jazeera. “I have given them some of my old jewellery along with a few one-gram pieces, so they won’t feel embarrassed at their own weddings”.
Shiv Yadav, a goldsmith working in Mumbai’s jewellery hub of Zaveri Bazaar for more than three decades, says the market today is increasingly dominated by artificial jewellery.
“If 10 people walk into the shop, only one ends up buying gold; the rest turn to artificial jewellery,” Yadav told Al Jazeera. “I had never seen such a dramatic shift”.
