Picture: The groom and bride after the wedding receiving the blessings
Have you seen movie Monsoon Wedding about an Indian wedding and were you also intrigued by the colors, the music, the beautiful dresses and the dancing? Ever since Monsoon Wedding I wanted to attend an Indian wedding. And luck had it that my dad asked me recently if he and I shall go to an Indian wedding; Ihe did not have to ask twice. So on Sunday the 30th of April, according to astrology a very auspicious and lucky day because it is the third day after the new moon, the daughter and son of two Indian business empires, the Satyam and Ramco Groups, were about to celebrate their marriage in Hyderabad. My father and I were picked up at 8.30am by a chauffeur and driven to the massive wedding tent outside the city of Hyderabad were hundreds of security-guards ushered us and the 20’000 invited guests to the entrance. After we passed the metal-detectors we were ushered to our VIP seats. As one of the few attending foreigners, I surprisingly met two other Swiss men from Holcim and Rieter, we were assigned VIP-seats close to the stage where we sat down on comfortable red cushions and we served drinks by ladies. At 9am the wedding got going. It consisted out of the Hindu blessing of the bride, than the welcoming of the groom into the family and finally the wedding ceremony followed by a sumptuous buffet. Exactly at 11.20am, the time determined by the astrologers as optimal, the groom got to see the until then hidden bride and tided the knot around her neck with a necklace, herewith completing the ceremony and making them a wed couple. Shortly before that 11.20am the Indian finance minister and some other high ministers arrived to attend the wedding and give their blessings. After the knot was literally tied the VIP guests stormed the stage to give their blessings and presents to the newly-wed couple. Through the skill full employment of my elbows and leveraging my size I managed to kneel down in front of the couple and appropriately hand-over the presents (and wished them a happy honey-moon to Switzerland, as our little country is the hot-spot for Indian honey-mooners). The whole wedding was over in less than five hours. This being my first Indian wedding I realized a few major differences to Western weddings. For example throughout the whole ceremony there was a constant noise-level and a buzz of activity in the audience as chairs were constantly brought-in and re-arranged in order to accommodate more and more people. Like everywhere in India the high number of people let to a lot of pushing and shoving that was enhanced by a plethora of photographers and film-teams capturing the wedding. As an Indian explained to me Indian weddings are not as focused and well-structured as Christian weddings with the ceremony dragging on for hours. This leads to more noise and chaos and there is never a moment of reflection or quietness as in Christian weddings. Apparently only Punjabi-weddings have a lot of dancing, singing and drinking, not Hyderabad weddings. Nevertheless the sheer size of the wedding was awe-inspiring and the attending women in their beautiful Saris and clad in gold and diamonds were simply breath-taking. The pictures I took are only a humble representation of their beauty due to the women’s reluctance to be pictures and the poor light in the tent. Not only was this the biggest wedding I ever attended, it was also the hottest as the Monsoon-heat was building up in India and the temperature reached 42° centigrade outside and probably more inside the tent. Because of that men only were shirts over their pants without ties, what a relief! See the pictures here.
Picture: The wedding tent for 20'000 people
Comments