Jak's Traks: Wedding season

Jaipur, Wednesday 6 February 2013

I've been lucky enough to have been able to experience the wonder that is the Indian wedding.

On Sunday evening, we went to an exchanging of rings ceremony. This, my hosts explained to me, usually takes place a few days before the wedding. It's held in a garden, which you hire, and is paid for by the groom's family. The garden is decorated with long, cloth streamers above your head, and around the edges it's lined with buffet stalls, serving various curries, desserts and salads. At one end of the garden there's a glass-fronted room, with seats and a stage with two big thrones on it. Presents which the bride's family are giving to the couple are on display in one corner.

The groom's already there, in a white suit, having some photos taken on his throne, and then he takes a seat in the front row. The bride arrives and not long after, the two thrones are moved to the side of the stage and a dancer takes to the stage. The music is deafeningly loud, as she struts her Bollywood stuff. Other women hop up onto the stage with money in their hands. They circle the money around the dancer's head before putting it in a small tin bowl on the stage. One dancer gives way to the next, and finally one of the women in the wedding family turns the music down a bit.

We head out into the garden after a bit, and get some dinner. It is absolutely delicious... some rice, bread, a few different curry dishes, and dessert, all on one plate. It's a trick in itself to eat it standing up, holding the plate with one hand and tearing the bread, scooping up curry with the other. There are tables and chairs, but they're all taken.

We leave after that and head home, with full bellies.

The next night, it's an acutal wedding - this time, it's a neighbour's daughter. We arrive after 8pm and mingle a bit, while fascinated children come up to us and ask where Gabi and I are from. They scuttle off to bring us juice and offer us other things. We have dinner - a similar arrangement to the previous night. It's quite a bun fight to get some bread. Men are busy making it at a stall, in tandoori ovens built on the grass. They pull the bread out with long metal poles and land them onto tin plates where the gathered crowd snatch them up. You have to be quick!

The groom appears on a white horse, and pulls up outside the garden, where he's surrounded by lights and dancers before he comes in. He dismounts and comes into the garden through a wide tunnel made of colourful cloth, with horn blowers blasting alongside him, to announce his arrival. He makes his way into a glass-fronted room, like the previous night, and sits on his throne. The bride arrives next. She's led in by her bridesmaids, with an expression that's somewhere between reticent, resigned and amused.

They begin the long series of ceremonial goings-on, which will eventually lead to them actually being married at around midnight. It's a three-hour affair. The bride places a floral garland over the groom's head. They pause for photographs. He repeats for her. Again a pause for photos. And I'm not sure what the rest involves as we left then, around 10pm. It apparently culminates with the bride and groom walking around a fire seven times, with some religious words spoken, and at that point they're deemed to be man and wife. And then, it's party time.