I said there are a lot of blessings in an Indian wedding, the morning after the ceremony held another round (in fact two rounds!) of them at the bride’s house, before she left, going for the groom’s place. Some tears started to show…
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There is also an unexpected tradition in an Indian (Bengali) wedding: after the ceremony is over, the couple is not left together and alone (in fact, they are not let alone for a couple more days). Until the morning they will stay awake at the ceremony place together with their close friends. We added a bit of modernity into it and spent the time playing charades and Mafia.
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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…
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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):
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Fathers are also important in an Indian wedding: before the religious ceremony the groom’s father visited the bride, blessed her and offered a present (in this case a necklace) and then the bride’s father visited the groom for blessings and offering a present (a modern watch in this case):
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The religious part essential in a traditional Indian wedding, it was the highest point. For this there was a wisely-looking priest (someone told me how much he’s looking like Rabindranath Tagore), who here is preparing the place for the future ceremony: he delimited a square where nobody else than the “actors” were allowed, I as a photographer, was forbidden to step inside.
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Anywhere a wedding happens, may it be India, Europe, the Americas, no matter where, there is a thing in common: the very center of the ceremony is the bride and her beauty. So was the case here too, we had a beautiful bride, with a beautiful dress, in a beautiful location.
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As there can’t be a wedding with no bride, it also can’t be one with no groom. So while she was doing her job on her room, receiving guests, accepting presents, posing, he was doing the same in his own room, on his own throne, just a floor below.
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There can’t be a wedding with no bride, she is essential part of the ceremony. She was here on a throne, waiting for the big moment, receiving the guests, posing with them, accepting presents, smiling. In a word, doing her job.
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Since the bride was in a different city (about 200 km away) and the main ceremony was happening at her place, the groom side travelled in a convoy. Of course, a car was standing out, the one carrying the groom. Its decoration reminded me a bit about the car decorations in a Romanian wedding, but were more excessive.
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