How to India: Weddings

This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide, just a basic overview based on our limited experience.

Preparing for the event:
What should I wear? The traditional Hindi wedding dress is bright red, so it is recommended that you wear anything else. You can still wear red, just make sure the majority of your dress isn't red. Although, from what I could gather after being at the wedding, no one is going to mistake you for the bride in any of the pictures unless you also happen to be wearing 50+ bracelets and 6 inches worth of flower garlands with cornmeal in your hair. As long as you avoid this style, you should be fine. Most people will be wearing business casual type of wear, for women this means a colorful sari and for men it is jeans and a button up shirt, possibly slacks and a button up shirt. Family members will be wearing more tradition clothes, but if you are family, you don't have to read this post to find out what to wear.
What gift should I bring?
Some modern couples will create a gift registry of sorts, but you can never go wrong with a pretty envelope full of money. Make sure that it is an odd number, usually to help out with this if you buy a wedding envelope it will conveniently have a 1 rupee piece pasted onto the front. Not sure why, but this will bring luck. If you want to get something for the couple you can always bring some sort of gold statue of a god, kitchenware, or if you are really close, jewelry for the bride. There isn't really a "gift table" so once the ceremony is over you all gather on stage to meet the bride and groom and you have to give them the gift then. You will probably have 10 seconds (30 if you are lucky) so I would recommend just an envelope with money, it is also considered one of the most considerate gifts, bonus.

The Wedding Itself:

Traditional Hindu weddings are not a day long event, they contain days worth of ceremonies, including painting the bride with mehndi (also known as henna), home decorations, engagements with written proposals, groom parades, etc. As we were only friends, we were invited to one of the last rituals, it only last for 2 hours and then there was the food, mingling, and dancing. Side note: before a bride is married her female relations gather together to cover her in mehndi designs, hidden inside some of these intricate patterns, they hide the names of the bride and groom. Theoretically the groom isn't allowed to do anything on their wedding night until he can find the names. 

Our invitation said that the wedding started at 9:45 am and when we arrived at 9:45 am, we were there with only 10 other people in a large auditorium with a stage and a large covering set up with 3 million flowers. After 15 minutes we heard a loud drum procession and looking out the window saw the groom being carried on the shoulders of his male family members up into the building.

Good thing these were hanging on the gates, gotta
make sure that we were at the right place.

Walk way outside that led up to the building.

Stage with flowers hanging down and the camera set up.

We watched as they awkwardly tried to get through doorways and up the steps to the stage and then the groom was sat in a chair facing the audience. The entire ceremony was in Telegu (I think, could have also been Sanskrit, Hindi, or Klingon) and so it was hard to understand what was happening. Thankfully, there was a camera crew with a camera crane to pan the audience and get our reactions as well as a crew on the stage itself and everything was broadcast on a screen off to the side. Thanks to this projection and the wonderful 1980s clipart that accompanied it, we were able to watch some of the various rituals.

This part went on for well over 2 hours and presided over by a Hindu priest speaking with the voice of a televangelist, so to detail exactly how it went would be difficult. To give you an insight into some of the highlights though:

• The groom got to wear a white suit with turban and what appeared to be a pure diamond unibrow and face the audience while the bride had family members ceremoniously place more necklaces and bracelets then I thought physically possible.
• After the bride was covered in jewels, one of the sets of parents came and washed the groom's feet and then painted them yellow and red.
• Groom had lots of milk and sugar poured into his hand which he had to drink and then after about an hour he got to turn around and see his bride, but was still separated by a large sheet that some people held up.
• The priest said some things and then the bride and groom played footsie (maybe toesie would be a better word, there was this weird round pillow that they had to put their foot on and then caressed each others toes with their own toes).
• Lots of pouring water through each others hands and exchanging more flower garlands.
• At one point they each had a tropical leaf with what looked like a beef patty in it and I thought maybe they were going to feed it to each other, but instead they smooshed it on each others heads. Then for about 15 minutes they poured cornmeal on each other, just throwing it on each other's heads. It looked like a lot of fun-- wedding food fight! When it was over and everyone came up to greet them what you did was take a hand full of cornmeal from a bowl and then sprinkle some on each of their heads and then move on. Why don't we do this in America?
• There was no wedding ring exchanged, at least, not a finger ring. The groom did give the bride a toe ring at which point Daniel started singing "if you like it then you better put a toe ring on it"
• At the end they got to sit in fancy king chairs while hundreds of people threw food at them and congratulated them.

The happy bejeweled couple. 

Flowers seem so much nicer than car paint.

Indian weddings are typically quite large -- 500 to 1,000 people will attend for at least some part of the wedding. You can usually tell when the ceremonies are wrapping up and the food is about to start because the auditorium will suddenly start to fill up quickly. Once the ceremony is over all the men in the audience go up to meet the couple and then the women and once you have made it across the stage you can file out to the eating area. One great thing about Indian events is that there will always be food and lots of it. The plates when we went were 2-3 times larger than any other plate I have ever eaten off of and there was plenty of food to fill them with. Curries, sweets, fruits, rices, and flat breads filled us to bursting and then we started in on the ice cream/ kulfi.

There was also plenty of music and even if we could have understood the language of the wedding, I'm sure it would have all been drowned out by the constant beating of the drummers through out the entire thing. There was a band setting up as we started to eat and I believe they were about to begin dancing, but we were too full and tired to stay any longer. However, if you do ever find yourself at a Hindu wedding and you have any inclinations to dance, I would recommend learning a bit of bhangra. Daniel and I watched the video below a few times and had we not been so full of food were ready to show off our dance moves.

What is the most interesting wedding tradition you have seen/done? Is there any tradition that you just can't stand?