A Big Fat Indian Wedding

If you have been to India and missed on attend any one of the big fat Indian weddings then you surely missed a lot. India is the melting pot for all traditions and rituals. What any Indian woman has dreamt from her childhood is, how grand would her wedding be and how she would look like a doll in her wedding dress.

The preparations for an average Indian wedding starts as far as a year before the wedding date. Most hectic are the final two months before the wedding, the last mile is the most chaotic. The dust settles only a week after a week-long marriage is completed. 

There is also a long tradition of matching the stars of the bride and the groom before they actually meet. India is more focused on the compatibility of the stars in the heaven then with the compatibility of the boy and the girl. Arrange marriages are a big preference in India. 

The Indian marriages are getting expensive day on day. The amount of money spent on a single wedding can reach to an obscene figure of crores in the Indian market. The jewelry has to be exquisite the clothes have to be unique and in vogue. The gifts need to be lavish. The attendees of the auspicious occasion need to come in different attire for every ritual and the rituals end for a couple of days and sometimes stretching to weeks.

The Indian weeding is a resemblance of the celebrations that an average household in India attaches to the occasion of marriage. All relatives need to be flown in to attend the wedding and shower their blessings on the bride and the groom. 

Indian Marriages are a series of events best summarized in five days. The first day of celebration is called the “Mehndi Night”. On that day the relatives put Henna, a kind of tattoo, on the palms of the bride and themselves.

The second day is called the “Mangal Snan” – The holy bath in which relatives help the bride and the groom put Haldi (Turmeric) on the hands and legs of the bride and the groom. This is done to ward off any evil sights from them and also to give their body strength to endure the week long events in front of them.

The third day is the night of marriage when the groom walks up to the brides place and marries her.

The fourth day is when the groom carries the bride back to his house and the girl leaves the house of her parents.

The fifth day is the Wedding Reception day when the Grooms family members invite all their relatives and neighbors to announce that the marriage has culminated.