Indian Weddings

Thought of writing today about Indian weddings. Well its said all over the world that there are loads of rituals and they span a week. Well thats true but partially. 

1) First, we have the "rokka" ceremony wherein the boy's and girl's family meet each other. By family I mean just parents and 1-2 other important family members. Usually the engagement and wedding dates are set on this date. As this is the first meeting their is lots of formality and shyness :)
2) Then on a later date their is engagement ceremony. The guest count is usually upto 100 people (if the families are not millionare). Ofcourse, this is an important day for bride and groom, and there is lots of dhak-dhak going on.

3) Well, after engagement the boy and girl are officially engaged and can go on dates openly... especially if its an arrange marriage. Yes! they happen in India, infact more than 50% marriages in India are arrange. Might share those details in another post....

4) 3-4 days before the actual wedding day, the guests start pouring into the house, specially those who live far away and cant commute daily. The wedding ceremonies start with a small puja (prayer session) held on 1st day.

5) On next day guy's family meets girl's family and they exchange gifts (sagan ceremony). Although its usually a small function and often combined with engagement party, its a very expensive one. As all the things - jewellery, clothes, bedsheets, furniture, cosmetics etc are exchanged. Pheww!!
6) Then the night before wedding we have a mehndi (heena) night. Girls put heena on their hand (Bride puts on feet too).  Its really a very special thing :). Its usually clubbed with cocktail and dance party. 

7) Then on the next day in morning the bride and groom (separately) are made ready for D-day. Family members put haldi (turmeric) on their body and then they need to bathe from water brought from nearby temple. Ohh I love all these things soooo much. Below is the kalash (pot) used to store the water

8) Finally in the night the wedding ceremony starts. The boys side comes to the venue dancing on loud music, the groom comes on horse :) . Then the bride n groom exchange garlands. Later around 1:00 AM they exchange vows (it takes 2-3 hrs but it can be sped up by slipping 100Rs note to the pandit ji  :)))
 

Wedding Place

9) In the morning around 4:30 or 5:00 the girl says good bye to her family... there are lots of tears and blessings and love... I cried a lot myself :(((

DONE!! see its not that loooooonnnnggggg... hahaha

Note: India is diverse in culture and different parts of India have different rituals and different wedding dresses... Yippeee. I wrote about a north indian hindu wedding.