Category: weddings

Indian wedding: beautification

The ceremony happened to the bride’s home so it and the reception after was organised by her family. Two days later it was followed by another reception, this time at the groom’s place, organized by his family. Here’s the bride making herself beautiful for the reception:

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Indian wedding: the bargain

The groom returned home with the bride, here he encountered another expected “surprise”: the door bas blocked by the women inside, who demanded a price to allow him inside with the wife. And we had a funny part: they asked for “10” so he paid 10 rupies, which is practically nothing, compared with 10 thousands, as they intended. Careful with the words, girls!

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Indian wedding: the arrival

After the wedding, arriving at the groom’s house, another thing happened: a white cloth was put on the stairs at the entrance with a plate holding red paint. The bride stepped on the paint and then walked inside, leaving some red tracks of her feet. The groom followed on her tracks.

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the cry

I was warned this is going to happen and be ready with my camera to capture it, but I swear it was genuine: leaving the parent’s house the bride started to cry, it was an authentic cry and it made me feel a bit bad, like a vulture for capturing it… but I remembered I am a photographer and kept shooting.

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the departure

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…

indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the sleepover

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.

indian wedding

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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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Indian wedding: the fathers

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):

indian wedding
indian wedding

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Indian wedding: the priest

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.

indian wedding priest

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