I can hear the bells! Wait jingle bells or wedding bells…
It’s wedding season! Now that the sun is not sweltering everyday and it cools down to 60-70 F at night marriages may commence! Let me start by giving a brief explanation of Indian weddings. They are nothing like Western, Christian weddings so get any preconceived notions out of your head right now. So now that you are expecting nothing here’s how it starts.
I would say a majority of weddings in India are arranged but the attitude towards “love marriages” is not as awful as we Americans think it to be. I have a lot to say about arranged and love marriages, in fact I even wrote several of my college essays surrounding this topic, but I’ll keep it short and sweet here. I used to think arranged marriages were just the worst thing that could happen to anyone in the whole world and everyone in India should be liberated from their wrongdoing and be shown the light in love marriages. Okay so maybe that’s a little dramatic but looking back on what I believed when I arrived in India and my thoughts on marriage now that’s not too far off. The Indian mentality is that love comes with arrangement. My host parents had an arranged marriage in addition to the majority of the population in their generation. Looking at my host parents now I can say with absolute confidence that they love each other, they love their two daughters, and they have a wonderfully happy home life (very similar to my family back home). My older sister, Ranjana is completing her studies right now but when she gets married her parents are supportive of her chose to have an arranged marriage or love marriage. Ranjana and Muskan have both said that they want arranged marriages because they are both dedicated to their careers and don’t want to have to worry about boys. When I heard this I was shocked because that is one of the most kick ass feminist things I’ve ever heard. My sister’s trust my host parents to make a good match for them so that they may come to love someone else post arrangement while they continue to focus on their career and life goals. Now there is some dedicated girls right there. After many conversations similar to this one I have come around on arranged marriage and I think it is a really great system for those who want it and can even be used as a means of gender equality and feminism!
If Indian weddings and American weddings could talk Indian weddings would say, “Go big or go home.” and tell American weddings to, “just give up you are so pathetic”. In fact a version of this happened with me as a delegate for American weddings and every single Indian guest ever at the Indian weddings as diplomats for Indian weddings. I was instructed several times that “I would never see anything like this in my country” and “Indian weddings are much larger and better than American weddings”. Those Indian diplomats aren’t wrong about being bigger. They even start bigger. Wedding invitations are huge. They are often boxes containing several letters and even a small gift such as dried fruit (nuts). These invitations must be a little bit bigger than American invitations because Indian weddings are not one function like American weddings are. Indian weddings may last up to a week long and have several ceremonies and parties leading up to the actual wedding ceremony. You may be invited to all the events, just a few, or just the wedding itself. Luckily my family was invited to all the functions for both Punjabi weddings (wooo hooo) whether we went to all of the functions is a different story.
Our first wedding was my host mom’s brother’s wedding (not biological brother, brother in an Indian cousin sense). This wedding was an arranged marriage but my family described it as a combination of love and arranged marriage because they couple already love each other before their wedding. This series of wedding events showed me what a low cost, budget wedding in India looked like. The first event I attended for their wedding celebrations was the ring exchange ceremony. It took place in the back patio area of a local hotel in Indore. There were probably 100 people at this ceremony. I’m not sure how comfortable I feel calling it a ceremony because the majority of the time it was just one long continuous stream of photo taking. If someone gave the groom a box of sweets there was a picture of the before, the gift exchange, the hug after, and a posed picture together. And almost everyone got up to the bride and groom and gave them Shaguun (money and blessings of the marriage). My family and I arrived before the bride and groom, in fact I think all the guests were there before the engaged couple, at 9 PM. Late night partying is the name of the game here. I think we left this engagement party around 12:30-1 or so. All of that time was spent eating, looking at the bride and groom click photos with other guests, rushing to get your picture clicked with them while feeding the bride and groom meetai (sweets), eating some more when the fresh tandoori paneer is brought out, watching everyone dance to the combination of DJ music and drummers, then leaning on your mom repeatedly saying, “chelloooo mama please chelloooo”/“Let’s go mom please let’s go” until she gives in and spends another 30 minutes telling everyone at the party good bye.
The next function for our groom brother’s wedding was the ——walking water ceremony——. Dancing with money then giving to the drum players. The whole purpose of this ceremony was to allow for the commencement of another ceremony. Once the water was brought back from the temple everyone rushed up to the grooms room and spread turmeric paste al over his face. Once everyone’s fingers were stained yellow from applying the paste the groom mixed the temple water with his bath water in order to bathe. I think in some families this is done on both the bride and groom but for this wedding we just stuck with the groom.
It’s wedding season! Now that the sun is not sweltering everyday and it cools down to 60-70 F at night marriages may commence! Let me start by giving a brief explanation of Indian weddings. They are nothing like Western, Christian weddings so get any preconceived notions out of your head right now. So now that you are expecting nothing here’s how it starts.
I would say a majority of weddings in India are arranged but the attitude towards “love marriages” is not as awful as we Americans think it to be. I have a lot to say about arranged and love marriages, in fact I even wrote several of my college essays surrounding this topic, but I’ll keep it short and sweet here. I used to think arranged marriages were just the worst thing that could happen to anyone in the whole world and everyone in India should be liberated from their wrongdoing and be shown the light in love marriages. Okay so maybe that’s a little dramatic but looking back on what I believed when I arrived in India and my thoughts on marriage now that’s not too far off. The Indian mentality is that love comes with arrangement. My host parents had an arranged marriage in addition to the majority of the population in their generation. Looking at my host parents now I can say with absolute confidence that they love each other, they love their two daughters, and they have a wonderfully happy home life (very similar to my family back home). My older sister, Ranjana is completing her studies right now but when she gets married her parents are supportive of her chose to have an arranged marriage or love marriage. Ranjana and Muskan have both said that they want arranged marriages because they are both dedicated to their careers and don’t want to have to worry about boys. When I heard this I was shocked because that is one of the most kick ass feminist things I’ve ever heard. My sister’s trust my host parents to make a good match for them so that they may come to love someone else post arrangement while they continue to focus on their career and life goals. Now there is some dedicated girls right there. After many conversations similar to this one I have come around on arranged marriage and I think it is a really great system for those who want it and can even be used as a means of gender equality and feminism!
If Indian weddings and American weddings could talk Indian weddings would say, “Go big or go home.” and tell American weddings to, “just give up you are so pathetic”. In fact a version of this happened with me as a delegate for American weddings and every single Indian guest ever at the Indian weddings as diplomats for Indian weddings. I was instructed several times that “I would never see anything like this in my country” and “Indian weddings are much larger and better than American weddings”. Those Indian diplomats aren’t wrong about being bigger. They even start bigger. Wedding invitations are huge. They are often boxes containing several letters and even a small gift such as dried fruit (nuts). These invitations must be a little bit bigger than American invitations because Indian weddings are not one function like American weddings are. Indian weddings may last up to a week long and have several ceremonies and parties leading up to the actual wedding ceremony. You may be invited to all the events, just a few, or just the wedding itself. Luckily my family was invited to all the functions for both Punjabi weddings (wooo hooo) whether we went to all of the functions is a different story.
Our first wedding was my host mom’s brother’s wedding (not biological brother, brother in an Indian cousin sense). This wedding was an arranged marriage but my family described it as a combination of love and arranged marriage because they couple already love each other before their wedding. This series of wedding events showed me what a low cost, budget wedding in India looked like. The first event I attended for their wedding celebrations was the ring exchange ceremony. It took place in the back patio area of a local hotel in Indore. There were probably 100 people at this ceremony. I’m not sure how comfortable I feel calling it a ceremony because the majority of the time it was just one long continuous stream of photo taking. If someone gave the groom a box of sweets there was a picture of the before, the gift exchange, the hug after, and a posed picture together. And almost everyone got up to the bride and groom and gave them Shaguun (money and blessings of the marriage). My family and I arrived before the bride and groom, in fact I think all the guests were there before the engaged couple, at 9 PM. Late night partying is the name of the game here. I think we left this engagement party around 12:30-1 or so. All of that time was spent eating, looking at the bride and groom click photos with other guests, rushing to get your picture clicked with them while feeding the bride and groom meetai (sweets), eating some more when the fresh tandoori paneer is brought out, watching everyone dance to the combination of DJ music and drummers, then leaning on your mom repeatedly saying, “chelloooo mama please chelloooo”/“Let’s go mom please let’s go” until she gives in and spends another 30 minutes telling everyone at the party good bye.
The next function for our groom brother’s wedding was the ——walking water ceremony——. Dancing with money then giving to the drum players. The whole purpose of this ceremony was to allow for the commencement of another ceremony. Once the water was brought back from the temple everyone rushed up to the grooms room and spread turmeric paste al over his face. Once everyone’s fingers were stained yellow from applying the paste the groom mixed the temple water with his bath water in order to bathe. I think in some families this is done on both the bride and groom but for this wedding we just stuck with the groom.
The next event for this wedding was their actual wedding ceremony! We began the evening at 9 by meeting the groom and the rest of the wedding guests at a local Gudwara (Sikh temple-Hindu Punjabis often enter into gurdwaras because they are from the region where Sikhism originated). There male family members were given a really fancy pink turban that is typical of wedding attire for the groom and male guests. My host dad didn’t want to mess with that whole situation so he just sported the long piece of fabric as a scarf. Once everyone had arrived (not the bride, the bride does not attend this part) the groom mounted a white horse, the wedding party was enclosed by a string of giant chandelier lamps carried by a group of really strong women, and the whole party was lead by a giant decorated caravan that played ear deafening music. This procession from one place to the wedding venue is called Bharat. My family walked a while but when things started to get smelly - really we were walking through a fish market and not too far from one of India’s famous pools of stagnant smelly water - my host dad rescued us by bringing the car so we could drive the rest of the way.
Once at wedding venue, another hotel in Indore, there was probably 200 people milling about eating and waiting to greet the Bharat. Not too long after we arrived the Bharat made their way to the entrance of the hotel and could be heard by the typical indian drums we went outside to join in the dancing. We danced Punjabi style with a lot of pointed fingers up in the air and shoulder bounces until the groom entered soon to be followed by his bride who had a procession of her own, be it much smaller and low key. Once the bride and groom were both inside they had everyone and their mother waiting to take a picture with them and give blessings. This went on for 2-3 hours during which I ate to my hearts content. Around 1 AM when all the guests had left and only 50 people remained the bride and groom moved into a side room where the wedding ceremony would take place.
We did not stay for the entire duration of the ceremony, or even half for that matter, choosing to leave at a more appropriate hour of 3 AM. The wedding set up is very different from American weddings because first of all it’s in the early hours of the morning, very few people you invite to your wedding stay, and the bride a groom are sitting focusing on a fire in the middle of the canopy that is above them with everyone sitting informally on the ground or in chairs. Before the ceremony began all the sisters, cousin sisters, and vague relatives of the groom and bride gathered to perform Joota Chupai. This is a tradition where the brides’s sisters steal the grooms shoes while the grooms’s sisters try to steal them back. While this tradition was taking place I had absolutely not idea what was going on except that my mama, my mother’s brother, was calling my name and handed me a shoe. So I guess in accordance with the tradition the grooms’s American sister won the shoe back! The thing that surprised me the most about Indian weddings is that during the actual wedding ceremony the family members and weddings guests aren’t quiet. While the bride and groom are repeating after the Pundit (Hindu priest) and pouring things into the fire people are cracking jokes and telling stories as loud as they can before receiving a scolding look from the Pundit. We left before the main part of the ceremony when the bride and groom walk around the fire with their clothes tied together but I’m sure it happened far after we left.
We did not stay for the entire duration of the ceremony, or even half for that matter, choosing to leave at a more appropriate hour of 3 AM. The wedding set up is very different from American weddings because first of all it’s in the early hours of the morning, very few people you invite to your wedding stay, and the bride a groom are sitting focusing on a fire in the middle of the canopy that is above them with everyone sitting informally on the ground or in chairs. Before the ceremony began all the sisters, cousin sisters, and vague relatives of the groom and bride gathered to perform Joota Chupai. This is a tradition where the brides’s sisters steal the grooms shoes while the grooms’s sisters try to steal them back. While this tradition was taking place I had absolutely not idea what was going on except that my mama, my mother’s brother, was calling my name and handed me a shoe. So I guess in accordance with the tradition the grooms’s American sister won the shoe back! The thing that surprised me the most about Indian weddings is that during the actual wedding ceremony the family members and weddings guests aren’t quiet. While the bride and groom are repeating after the Pundit (Hindu priest) and pouring things into the fire people are cracking jokes and telling stories as loud as they can before receiving a scolding look from the Pundit. We left before the main part of the ceremony when the bride and groom walk around the fire with their clothes tied together but I’m sure it happened far after we left.
The second wedding was of a fellow Punjabi family and their daughter, Vanisha. Vanish and her now husband, Abishake, chose to have a love marriage. But it’s a little tricky here because they look like an arranged marriage, they are form the same caste and economic class and they both grew up together as family friends. So this could also be categorized as a love and arranged marriage because they loved each other but then in accordance with tradition they followed they steps of an arranged marriage. Vanisha Didi and Abishake Bhaiya’s wedding spared no cost and consistently knocked me off my feet with their spread of food, decorations, and venues.
Their first wedding event was Mata Ki Chowki. Mata Kii Chowki is “a Punjabi thing” which is basically worship to the Goddess for the prosperity of the marriage and the couple’s future. This was held at Sayaji, the best restaurant in Indore, and (I’m not good at guessing numbers) 200 people were at this event. My host parents weren’t able to attend this Mata Ki Chowki because they were in the Punjab for another wedding, I know party animals right? But Ranjana, Muskan, and I went and had fun for them. Before entering into the ballroom where the Mata Ki Chowki was taking place we removed our shoes. We found seats inside next to Vanisha Didi and met her handsome finance. We stayed in the room admiring the makeshift temple shrine and pundit music for about 2 hours before we found our way outside to get something to eat. Thankfully this event was not an outlier to the routine of Indian wedding functions all serving up a tasty 3 course meal from an unlimited buffet of food so we ate until we all had a justifiable number of food babies. When the clock struck 12 Ranjana left her slipper only to be found by her prince charming…just kidding we decided our late night out should come to an end considering we had school the following day.
Their first wedding event was Mata Ki Chowki. Mata Kii Chowki is “a Punjabi thing” which is basically worship to the Goddess for the prosperity of the marriage and the couple’s future. This was held at Sayaji, the best restaurant in Indore, and (I’m not good at guessing numbers) 200 people were at this event. My host parents weren’t able to attend this Mata Ki Chowki because they were in the Punjab for another wedding, I know party animals right? But Ranjana, Muskan, and I went and had fun for them. Before entering into the ballroom where the Mata Ki Chowki was taking place we removed our shoes. We found seats inside next to Vanisha Didi and met her handsome finance. We stayed in the room admiring the makeshift temple shrine and pundit music for about 2 hours before we found our way outside to get something to eat. Thankfully this event was not an outlier to the routine of Indian wedding functions all serving up a tasty 3 course meal from an unlimited buffet of food so we ate until we all had a justifiable number of food babies. When the clock struck 12 Ranjana left her slipper only to be found by her prince charming…just kidding we decided our late night out should come to an end considering we had school the following day.
The second party for this wedding was a cocktail party! This didn’t have any purpose besides an excuse to invite 1000 of your closest friends to eat food made in front of you and dance on stage with the hired performers of the evening. I’ve stated before that December, after Choti Diwali, is wedding season but let me explain the scale of what that means. Every night as my host family and I were driving out of Indore down some service roads to a wedding function for Vanisha Di we probably passed 8 weddings taking place in countryside wedding venues, all as elaborate and large as hers. This cocktail party was crazy. I am not able to get over how many people were there, at least 1000. After eating all the non-veg we could handle (Punjabis are known for loving non-veg) we danced off, hopefully, all of the calories we had consumed that evening. Again in typical Punjabi/Indian fashion we departed from this party around 2 AM, and it was still going strong.
The following day after the cocktail party we went to Vanisha Didi’s Mhendi party! Mhendi or henna tattoos are a national tradition for all Indian weddings regardless of the region of India and for good reason too! This celebration is just a gathering of close family and friends to eat yet again another lavish lunch, get mhendi under tents, and dance. My sisters and I ate then waited to get mhendi applied which was smart on our part because eating with dried mhendi on your hands is not easy nor enjoyable. The goal after getting mhendi is to make it stay on as long as humanly possible and that means not washing your hands until the next day, a little gross I know but hey beauty is unhygienic in India while is is pain in the US. Vanisha Didi and her husband arrived midway through the celebration. Vanisha Di showed up with mhendi on the underside of her hands and arms all the way up to her armpits and floral make up. For the remainder of the party she sat in a tent while two girls, one on each arm, finished her mhendi on the outside of her arms as guests greeted her and gave her and her fiancé warm wishes. I admire this Indian wedding tradition a lot and I definitely think I’ll make my unfortunate bridesmaids participate in something similar with me when I can trick someone into tying the knot with me.
That same evening was the ring exchange ceremony or मंगनी समारंभ. If I had to guess I would say that this was the largest event hosting around 2000 people. How do you even know 2000 people?? Anyways with a theme of white (hey some semblance of western weddings!!) the bride and groom exchanged rings followed by another gluttonous meal and several family performances. From what I understand each wedding event gets a larger and larger DJ/stage set up as they go on so this being the last party before the actual wedding they had a stage fit for ACL or another music festival. My impression was that this party served the purpose to get all of the drunk speeches and embarrassing family moments out of the way instead of at the reception in western weddings. The bride’s and groom’s family and close friends performed several dances and wished Vanisha and Abishake all the best in their new life together. It was really entertaining to see all the makeshift dances especially because Indian men don't have a weird allergy to dancing like American men do, in fact Indian men seem to be the people who enjoy dancing the most. Almost every dance floor during this series of wedding events was full of crazy Uncles and Sikh dads busting moves while their wives stood aside, horrified. I personally joined in with the crazy Uncles and my sisters.
Okay you’ve made it all the way to the (almost) end of this blog post to the actual wedding! The wedding venue and decorations did not disappoint and Vanisha Di’s wedding outfit was apparently “simple” for Indian standards even though she was having trouble walking because she was holding up so much material, sparkles, and bangles. It is an Indian custom that all brides wear red and they typically also have a large nose ring that connects via a gold chain to one of their earrings. Vanisha Didi didn’t have her nose pierced before hand and like many other brides of this generation simply wore a stick on nose ring/hoop. That was smart in my mind because that hoop is huge and looks really heavy plus you need to be able to move it out of the way of your mouth without too much pain while eating. The couple spent the first several hours on a main stage while married couples and wedding guests came to them to give them blessings and take a photo with the family. Typically it is at this point that the couple receives their wedding gift, shagun, in the form of a small envelope with money. But Vanisha Didi liked to do things a little differently and she and her husband chose to not accept any money and only ask for blessings. This method has a really positive effect in society and all of the guests tend to be very impressed with the couple thinking they are very devout and un-material Hindus. This is kind of a tricky concept though because Indian weddings are huge and likely to drain several savings accounts for years to come and accepting shagun would be a nice way to help offset some of those initial costs. It’s an unfortunate situation because maybe the couples that don’t place a lot of emphasis on material items and money may be from lower castes and socio-economic systems therefore they would need the shagun more than a wealthy couple looking to make a good impression in society despite the cost. I’m not saying that this particular couple embodies that rich mentality because they don’t. Vanisha Didi is very humble as well as generous with her resources and she genuinely cared that everyone had a good time and was comfortable. My family stayed for several hours but we left around 1:30 AM because my younger sister, Muskan wasn’t feeling well and it was starting to get seriously cold in our thing Indian traditional outfits. When we left the wedding ceremony hadn’t even started and the majority of the guests had left after taking a photo with the couple and eating. We had done the same and headed out confident that the rest of their wedding would be just as wonderful as all the other functions had been.
Unfortunately Weebly won't allow me to upload videos so I have to compile all my videos into one, upload them to Youtube, then link them here (I have a lot of free time on my hands). So I guess in the long run it's not unfortunate because you can still see them even though it's just a short little video of the random things at Indian weddings I thought were cool or just really funny. I know the quality is really bad but again just so you can get an idea and I had to go through the whole Youtube, iMovie upload system as well.