The two sides of Indian wedding ceremonies

In the past two weeks, I was in India attending my brother's wedding ceremony. As is usual with Indian weddings, the ceremony lasted for many days, in this case, five days. Many family members came from the four corners of the country. It is one of those opportunities when people can meet, even after not seeing each other for decades. From my perspective, it was even more interesting as it was the first time that I participated in such an event.

Each one of the five days could separated into two parts: the first part where the rituals and formalities happen and later after a dinner, the second part starts which consists mainly in a party where all dance and enjoy together. It is no surprise that the latter is the fun part, whereas the former is frankly very boring. Even though in western societies such (boring) rituals still happen, they basically consist of one ceremony where the couple exchange rings.
There is almost no more symbolism in such ceremony. In an Indian wedding, on the other hand, the symbolism and protocols involved are far greater.

In the first day, the engagement ceremony is performed and is organized by the bride's family. In such ceremony, the couple, seeming to adopt the western tradition, exchanges rings and later all the elders (and only the elders) give presents to the couple. Until then nothing really
shocking, except for the fact that from this day on the couple is no allowed to see each other until the wedding ceremony takes place. Moreover, there are always many protocols to follow. For instance, the groom is necessarily the last to arrive and is always accompanied by the best man, in this case me. For another example, when we were leaving the hotel for the engagement party, it was the duty of the groom's father to accompany all his brother-in-laws, for some mysterious reason!

In the second day, a ceremony called tikka happens which this time is organized by the groom's family. There some praying is done in the presence of the bride's family, but not the bride herself since the couple cannot meet yet. As with religious ceremonies in the west, Indian pujas are a waste of time. Even worst than in a church since the priest speaks most of the time in Sanskrit and therefore the public, at least me, has the faintest of what is going on. After this ceremony, the bride's family is supposed to give some gifts to some members of the groom's family, including to me.

The event in the third day was not actually part of the wedding ceremony, but was rather aimed to Andrea and me. It was in fact our (second) engagement party, but the real reason was mostly to present Andrea to the family. As I requested a very informal ceremony, nothing religious happened. (Thank god.) We just had the typical couple dance, and then the party started.

The wedding ceremony was performed in the fourth day. The symbolism is very clear. The groom is supposed to go to the bride's home and "bring" her to the groom's house. This is of course symbolic for saying that the bride belongs no longer to her original family, but to the groom's, which in my opinion is quite unfortunate symbolism. It just maintains the clan culture among families for which you can frequently hear in the language used by Indians. For example, one can often hear things like: "You are not of the family." or "He is family.", etc. Such type of language is almost not present anymore in cultures like in the German or Brazilian cultures. During the evening, there are at least four religious moments, some where the groom and also the bride visit temples and other are performed by the priest at the dinner reception. The most important one lasted more than 3 hours which went until 5 in the morning. Again, no one is really interested since the priest is just saying what seems to be nonsense in Sanskrit.

There are, however, fun moments in between the boring religious rituals. For instance, the groom arrives the bride's home on a chariot, but during the journey the whole groom's family is dancing and having fun. For another example, there is an interesting play with the sisters of the bride, called salis (in fact, her girl cousins/sisters). The groom's brothers (in fact, his boy cousins/brother) have to bargain with the salis in order to enter the bride's house. This involves paying some money to them. In my brother's wedding, however, it would have been more fun when the salis knew how to play better. They bsaically did not seem to realize that this is just a game and that they should quickly lower their demands. So the game got boring because we were trying all possible ways to reduced the entrance price and they just kept
asking for high amounts (they insisted for almost 20 minutes on the price of 51 thousand rupees, equivalent to thousand Euros!). A similar game repeats itself with the groom's shoes. At some point, we are supposed to hide his shoes, but in such a way that the salis must be able to find them. Once found, we are again supposed to bargain for recovering the shoes, so that the groom can step out of the party with them. Once again, the salis did not seem to realize that this is just a game. So at the end it was unfortunately not that much fun.

In the fifth day, it was basically a reception without no formalities (Ufa!). It was really nice since everyone were much more relaxed as the all logistics were over. Andrea and I had to go directly from the reception to the airport since our plane was scheduled early in the morning.

Although there are a lots of formalities and protocols in an Indian wedding, much has changed since the times of my parents for example. Then the couple did not have any saying, but rather their parents would basically force them to marry. On the hand, now couples decide whether or not they like each other and want to marry. Things like the caste system does not seem to be no longer relevant. For instance, from the Indian customs, my brother's wife, that comes from the "superior" caste of professors, would not be allowed to marry my brother that comes from the "inferior" caste of warriors.

My final impression is that Indian weddings lose a lot of time in the first part with the religious rituals, when they should maximize the second part with the party. It is almost certain that Andrea and I will attempt to do so. Nevertheless, it was really interesting to participate in such event, but more interesting to spend time with all my cousins and family folks.