A tombstone unveiling can cost R140,000. Who gets that booking?

A tombstone unveiling can cost a family R140,000. A wedding can run to R1 million, and a homecoming after initiation to R70,000. Those figures come from The Celebrations Economy 2026, a study by UCT's Liberty Institute of Strategic Marketing launched on 2 October, which puts what South Africans spend on the moments they mark together at more than R500 billion a year.

That money does not flow to one big company. It is spread across caterers, tent and chair hire, decorators, photographers, printers, sound crews, transport operators, cleaners and stonemasons. For a lot of service businesses, celebrations are not a side line. They are the business.

A market with its own rules

The speakers at the launch kept coming back to one point: this spending is about meaning, and suppliers who miss that miss the customer. Dr Tumelo Chaka of United Stations said "we need to understand the rituals, emotions, relationships and cultural meanings that influence how people spend." Martin Neethling, a former chief marketing officer of PepsiCo Africa, called celebrations "powerful, consistent drivers of spend".

The volumes are real. A related study, reported alongside the launch, recorded 9,000 weddings across the nine provinces in 32 days, from 1 April to 2 May this year, with Gauteng (2,070) and the Western Cape (1,970) the busiest.

There is a catch. UCT points to a "party now, worry later" mindset that is adding pressure on household budgets, and 16% of respondents said they felt stress after a celebration. The family paying for an unveiling is often stretched. It is also rarely one person: it is usually a group of relatives who all want a say, working towards a date that cannot move.

The customer is rarely one person. It is a family, deciding together, on a date that cannot move.

What that means for how you sell

Our view is that suppliers do best here when they treat each kind of ceremony as its own product rather than as "an event". In practice:

• Name packages after the occasion. "Unveiling package for 150 guests" is easier for a family to discuss than a page of line items.
• Quote for the family meeting. A one-page quote that can be passed around, showing what is included, what is extra and the total, answers the questions before they are asked.
• Set out payment stages and dates up front. When budgets are tight, a clear deposit and balance schedule is often what turns interest into a booking.
• Plan around the calendar. Fixed dates and busy periods, like the April weddings that study picked up, mean families book suppliers early. Being able to confirm availability quickly matters.
• Keep a record of every job. Photos, guest numbers and what the family chose make the next quote faster, and the next enquiry often comes from someone who was a guest.

None of this needs a marketing budget. It needs a supplier who understands that to the customer, the date, the family and the meaning matter more than the tent.