Indian Wedding

This weekend, I got a chance to take part in an Indian wedding at the invitation of another intern at PHFI. Her name is Aditi and she is going to be a sophomore at Barnard College this upcoming year. She invited my friend Caroline and I because she knew that since we were Westerners we probably hadn’t had the chance to experience a real Indian wedding before. We were excited to check it out, and the night definitely exceeded any expectations that had going on.

I took about 300 pictures, which pretty much sums how long and elaborate the night was and thorough the idea of marriage is in Indian culture. Here are pictures to sum it up.

(6:00pm) We had trouble finding Aditi’s house because the road she lives on, Mother Teresa Crescent, is apparently the same road that the President of India lives on (more on that later). Our taxi driver had to stop and ask a couple of people, but we eventually found the house because there was a dressed up band playing really loud music in the driveway of the house.

Walking into the house, I saw this Volkswagen car. I guess that it would eventually be used to transport the groom to the hotel. Someone told me later that they used to have the groom ride to the hotel on a horse, but given India’s horrendous traffic and that fact that it’s monsoon season, it’s probably better that they ride in the car.

(7:00pm) The first of many, many ceremonies. That’s the groom sitting in the middle, with his mother wearing the hat. There were probably close to 40 family members at the house, ranging from immediate family to second cousins – and that was just the close family. The man in the long white beard is a Hindu priest and he’s performing a ceremony with mango leaves and holy water to purify the groom from his sins.

Before we left, there was a round of family pictures with all the aunts, uncles, grandparents, children, etc that were gathered at the house. While we were waiting, I got a chance to chat with the groom himself, the grooms father, and his best man. I learned that the groom and his bride are in the media industry, and that the majority of their family is either in the media or politics.

The groom and his cousin, Aditi, who invited Caroline and I to the wedding. Since the groom’s family is not from Delhi, the pre-wedding festivities were held at Aditi’s house. I found out there was Aditi’s father and uncle are both member’s of Parliament (!), which explains why their house could be on the same street as the President of India. When I had asked Aditi what her parents did when I first met her, she had replied that her father was an “advocate.” Ha ha ha.

Picture of the groom with Aditi’s dad, the member of Parliament, and her mother.

(8:00pm) When we’d called Aditi earlier in the day about where we should meet her, she gave us the option of meeting her at her house (which is what we did) or meeting her at the Hyatt in Delhi. Good thing we met her at her house, because we really got immersed into the whole atmosphere of the wedding. As we were all dropped off at the Hyatt, we were greeted again by the same band and were ushered into the hotel dancing! All the banter and excitement between the people was a symbolic gesture symbolizing the celebration of two people getting married.

(830pm) Coming into the hotel, we had to pass through a metal detector. Because nearly everyone was wearing bangles or metal of some sort, they were all setting the metal detector off. For some reason, even though I was dressed in a shirt and tie, I got pulled over and searched. After a while, everyone made it into the ballroom and was chit chatting with one another. Finally, after some time, the bride entered the room. She looked beautiful, and it took a while to understand the complexity of her outfit, with all the clothes, jewelry, makeup, and henna that she was wearing.

(9:00pm) Finally, a shot of the groom and the bride.

After the bride had entered the room, a time of blessings began. One by one, families and couples and friends went on stage and gave the bride and groom their wedding gifts. This process probably took about three hours, as people were constantly coming in and out. All in all, we guessed that there were 500 people give or take present at the wedding. There were some pretty famous guests in attendance too (you could tell when crowds gathered around their table or when security guards started pushing you out of the way). I heard Ajay Devgan (Bollywood star) and the future Prime Minister and leader of the opposition party were all in attendance. The movie star is the man in the back of the table with a white collar folded over a black blazer and the future prime minister is the one to his left, with the sweater vest, long white shirt, and thick black glasses. I snapped a picture of their table, right before all of them left early.

A shot of Caroline (right), Aditi (groom’s cousin, center), and myself

(1:00am) I snapped this shot after the best man flagged me down and ushered me right into the front. As the night passed on, people began heading home for the night, leaving the close family behind to attend the actual wedding ceremony, which began around 12:30am. Being one of the only foreigners in attendance, the best man grabbed me and allowed me to take a picture right up front. Here the Hindu priest is going through some of the traditional rites for an Indian marriage, which included circling a flame seven times to symbolize this life and six more lives in union together as a couple, reciting passages in Sanskrit, and showering of the couple with more dried rice. The ceremony lasted about two hours.

(2:30am) Last significant picture of the night. As the couple was exiting, Caroline and I got to snap one last shot of them before they left. They must have been exhausted. One of the most amazing parts of the night was seeing how calm and serene the bride was throughout the time. She almost never opened her mouth except to greet people, and always languidly glided around the different areas where the ceremonies were being held.

All in all, it was an incredible experience. One of the second cousins that we met joked around with us, saying, it’s a good thing that these weddings are so elaborate, it’ll ensure that you really love your spouse beforehand as well as afterwards because no one would want to go through another one of those marriages again. I definitely agree.