Have you ever attended an Indian wedding?
Some fancy attending one because of the fame of a multi-day party, and you won’t see anything like that in another country.
I just had my first time. It was far different from the style I was familiar with, and surprised me in some scenes that I’d never expected in a wedding.
Not all Indian weddings are long-running.
First, let me be clear. Not all Indian weddings are long-running.
One of the Curry Boy’s friends told me that the length of a wedding depends on the region, in a city or village, and how the family wants to do it. Some finish in a day (like mine), most weddings take 2-3 days, but some can last for 4-5 days. The Indian ladies I talked to like to attend the long one since more activities are involved, hence more fun.
It happened in a 4-Star Hotel and a village.
Since the bride is not Indian, they hold the wedding in a 4-star hotel and some rituals and ceremonies happened at the groom’s house.
During those days, I could see it was a full-scale Indian wedding, and I truly admired the bride who followed all the Indian traditions in this multi-day wedding. Even though she didn’t speak the local language at all, she did what the groom’s family told her what to do – for days, or even longer, way before the wedding happened.
In the memory of my own wedding, I rejected most of the proposals: ‘Do you want to put on a nose ring?’ ‘No.’ ‘What about a gold locket on the head?’ ‘No.’ I said No to most of the accessories which the Indian girls see them as beauty, whilst I take them as a burden. The only accessories I was willing to put on were a few bangles. Now, when I look back, my Curry mom did give me great freedom, didn’t she?
The food served during the wedding was another mystery to me. Sometimes hotel food, sometimes back to village level.
On the wedding invitation, ‘Dhaam’ is written on the 3rd wedding day. I asked Curry boy what ‘Dhaam’ is , ‘a feast’, he said. A scrumptious banquet immediately popped into my mind.
Eat a feast on leaves.
But what actually happened was, we grabbed our own seats at the table, each got a ‘plate’ which was sewn together by a few local tree leaves, then the ‘banquet team’ came to serve 6 to 7 kinds of food either directly on the leafy plate or in a small paper bowl.
Oh, did I mention they used hands to grab the rice for you too?
Once you have got food on your plate, you start eating with your hand, of course. While I had no intention mastering this skill, so I fetched a spoon from the kitchen by myself. The staff will kept coming, making sure everybody was well fed.
Then, after approximately 15-20 minutes, the other batch of guests would come to seize a seat because they also didn’t want to sit on the ground.
The food itself was tasty, yet it was like home food somehow.
From where I was born and lived, when you mean a feast, or at a banquet, I expected something people usually don’t cook at home. Here, in a Himanchali dhaam, it seemed the same, but with more varieties served in one shot.
‘Looks like we have a different definition of a feast.’ I said to Curry Boy.
This is the village style of an Indian wedding.
Curry Boy said, nowadays, this style of wedding only happens in a village. In the city, probably doing the popular buffet style.
If I were born to be an Indian, I would have liked it a lot, perhaps. Sadly, I didn’t feel that way. I’m not sure that I can call it a culture shock, but I can tell we like different things and have distinct tastes. That’s how I felt. Like it or not, I tried hard to remind myself – it’s about the bride and groom, Curry Boy, not about me.
