I was recently looking at tours of Hyderabad -- Tracy had recommended a fantastic tour guide named Jonty. There was an entire eight hour tour dedicated to Indian marriages -- learning about the customs, symbolism -- with the lure of potentially crashing your own Indian wedding!
My own learnings of Indian weddings and marriages have been through dabbles here and there... the Delhi marriage education workshop that specified which cousins you're allowed to marry and which cousins you're not... dinner with a colleague where he spoke of meeting his potential bride-to-be at a wedding; then interviewing her with all his cousins the next day to see if they were a match... but his cousins asking all the questions so he couldn't get a word in edge-wise! (they were married a few months later)... of course the bio-data (or "resumes") that parents carry for their children. The one that I still can't get over are the marriages that are already planned for the current year; insert spouse here: "He'll be getting married this July. We just have to find the bride."
I have to say, though, that I do love all the traditions, the history of each wedding I attend. Far less than just a party, there's also centuries of tradition in every step, with knowledge being passed along the way. Take the Sangeet, for instance. Traditional Sangeets were comprised of the bride-to-be's mother and other female relatives singing and dancing to the bride-to-be about marriage, and through this, giving advice on marriage and what it means to be a wife. More modern Sangeets now include men, as well.
Maybe it wasn't singing and it certainly wasn't dancing, but I had my own American version of this a couple weeks ago, in my bridal shower in NYC. Thrown by my parents at the Waldorf, it was the perfect way to see so many people who are important in my life. Held appropriately in the Marco Polo Room, Susan also ensured it had an Indian air through a sitar player who played throughout the event.
Perhaps the most meaningful, as well as most fun, part of the event came with my mother asking each woman in the room to write advice for me on a piece of paper given at the tables, thus "showering" me with their "recipe" for a successful marriage (with cooking a key theme of the event).
Elizabeth and Jeanne collected these, and three were selected from the bag to be read out loud. Katie advised remembering how you feel on your wedding day -- all the love, the butterflies, the way you feel about the person you've just married.
The older generation, perhaps not surprisingly, had a lot more practical things to say: "Be nice to your mother-in-law"; "ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have a separate bank account that he doesn't know about"; "Give your parents grandchildren ASAP."
A few pictures from the event:
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