Wedding bells!












Green lawn, violet flowers, soft music, wine glasses and pretty dresses. Everything was beautiful. I was attending a western wedding in a vineyard in California. The groom was Indian and the bride American. We had flown all the way from India to attend this wedding. I was attending such a wedding for the first time and so was very excited. The entire experience was very different from a typical Indian wedding.

Right from deciding the venue, menu, designing the invitation cards, inviting the guests, managing the budget for the wedding to the event management everything was entirely done by the bride and the groom. Unbelievably, to top it all the 7 bridesmaids’ violet dresses were also hand stitched by the bride. Wow thatz a lot. I remember for my wedding I did not do anything except look pretty and wear a smile throughout the ceremony. In Indian weddings the otherwise ‘independent’ bride and the groom conveniently and happily lie back on their parents for everything. The parents also enjoy this as they get the prominence and share a centre stage in these types of weddings. Today many youngsters are staying abroad and they just come for a week and attend their own wedding. Everything is ready for them.

In the western culture there is a totally individualistic approach to the entire event. The girl and the boy get married. The parents hardly have any role in the wedding. Our culture is different. It is more collectivistic. It is not only the girl and the boy who get married but two families get married. We just can’t imagine not involving our parents, our aunts our cousins in the entire wedding process. We expect them to offer a helping hand in the ceremony.

When I was standing on the stage for my reception there were soo many people whom both Kedar and I did not know, they were our parents’ guests. I know many people in India attending a reception just because that person was present for the reception they hosted. In this western wedding there were very few guests, friends and relatives whom the bride and groom knew personally. Not more than 60-70 people.

Any kind of wedding is not complete without gifts. Here there was a gift registry created by the bride and we had to gift them strictly from that list only. It was quite simple. We did not have to crack our brains behind what to gift and the couple did not have their cupboards flooded with random gifts. But somewhere I felt that the spontaneity of buying a creative gift and personal touch is lost in this.

So which type of wedding is better? It is difficult to say......

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