Day: March 6, 2012

Indian wedding: the feeding

With the ceremony over (around midnight) people went to eat and unlike the Romanian weddings I know, is not an all-night-long party, people just go to the reception place, eat then go away, leaving the space for others to come and eat.

One of the last to have food that night is the new couple, and while I don’t think is part of the tradition, I found cute seeing how she is feeding him 🙂 But is not the end, there are things to come…

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the red paint

A final step of the ceremony is when red paint is put on the bride‘s forehead (and nose, and top of the head, and hair). Now it is done, they are married, ceremony is over, time to party!

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the fire

The fire has an important role during the wedding ceremony: someone makes a fire, then the groom stand behind the bride, they put some food (cereals I believe) into the fire, they circle around the fire and repeat the operation a few time. It looks like a purification of sorts.

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the law

At some point of the religious ceremony someone from the authorities showed-up for the legal part of the marriage, he had the parts, bride, groom and fathers, sign the papers. Unlike the European weddings I saw before, the legal part happened at the same time and in the same place with the religious part and the authorities came to the ceremony instead of bride and groom going to the city hall.

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the ceremony

After the garland exchange the bride and the groom stepped in the area previously delimited by the priest. I don’t know exactly what happened since they were talking bengali, which I don’t understand a word, but I believe there were even more blessings, this time made by the priest. It took a long while.

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: garland exchange

A first step of the official ceremony was the garland exchange: both the groom and the bride were wearing a flower garland and when they first meet they exchanged those garlands three times. Then they kept wearing the garlands until the end.

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the attendance

As expected, a lot of guests attended the wedding ceremony and most of them were wearing traditional Indian dresses, who made for a wonderful combination of colors. At times the place became very crowded, being hard for the photographer to move around (and they didn’t care about the photographer, to let him do his job):

indian wedding

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