I was sitting with my girlfriend in a cafe in Lisbon as she caught up with her chat messages and suddenly started crying, I was very surprised and asked what is going on until she told me her Indian friend in Berlin got engaged to her German boyfriend. She was that emotional because she knew that this was big news for her friend which always dreamed about her wedding and already gave up on it. So seems like there is a wedding in India coming up!
I never thought I will be visiting India as I mentioned in the overall article about India but this was a good reason to do it so we booked the flights a week later and landed in India in January. As most people can imagine, an Indian Wedding requires a lot of preparation, not only from the groom and bride but also the guests, so we had to learn a typical Indian dance as most of you probably know from Bollywood movies and familiarize ourselves with the customs and what to wear.
The rough wedding plan:
The wedding took part at a very nice vineyard in Nashik and was planned for two days on the first day the Haldi Ceremony was held while on the second day, the actual wedding ceremony started and involved several hours of interesting customs the families of the bride and groom had to follow until the buffet opened and every one of the guests took pictures with the newlyweds and wished them all love on this earth. In the evening there was a cocktail party awaiting with an open bar, good food, and a lot of dancing.
The Haldi Ceremony:
The guests are supposed to wear yellowish/greenish cloth for the Haldi Ceremony (turmeric ceremony). Guest rub turmeric on the feet, hands, and head of the newlyweds for the Ceremony, and Women get henna on their hands. Once the Ceremony was over, different dances were performed which was very fun and interesting to watch. The wedding venue was overall very beautiful and decorated in bright vivid colors but the gorgeous clothes of the guest made the atmosphere even more incredible. An Indian girl that was in charge of the dance and choreography approached us at some point and told us that we will practice our dance in secret (the bride and groom didn’t know about our flashmob) with the other participants and we shall follow her, no need to say that I got really nervous at this point, dancing an Indian dance in front of a lot of Indians felt rather intimidating but I didn’t know that it will get even more intimidating until we all gathered for the practice. It turned out that someone has decided to change the choreography we practiced for weeks at home completely (some moves were similar and the music was the same). After practicing the whole dance 4 times I felt confident enough though to stand in the back and just try to do what the person in front of me does. Back at the main venue, we had time to grab some food before our action started while eating I realized how many photographers actually were at the venue and that a guy even came with a drone, it didn’t really help me not feel nervous but it can’t be helped, there was no way out of this. The plan was to storm on the stage from the side at a sign and surprise everyone with our little show as we started the action the nervousness flew away immediately and I think (without having seen the cinematic outcome yet) that we all did pretty well but more importantly, it felt really awesome to see the joy in the eyes of the newlywed as they are surprised by their friends from all over the world.
The actual Wedding
On the next day, we dressed up in the traditional Wedding clothes we bought in Mumbai with the help of the bride’s friend. As we arrived at the venue we were an hour late because we couldn’t get an uber since the driver always canceled our request because no one would order a drive back from the venue I guess. Luckily the bride’s family helped us out and send someone to fetch us after 30 minutes and a lot of panics that we will miss the party. As we arrived at the vineyard we spotted the bride fully dressed up with some family members at the entrance and she looked gorgeous! Again my Girlfriend started to cry and got emotional. We were lucky and had the chance to drive up to the vineyard with the bride in a big golf cart. The Wedding ceremony took place on a big stage outdoors and in some kind of amphitheater with a lot of chairs and white couches, the decoration was really beautiful and we secured a good seat to overwatch the ceremony, at some point a man with a red cloth came up to me and bind a turban on my head to fit in better as every man was wearing one. The ceremony itself contained various steps from burning things to the family handing over the bride as well as stealing the groom’s shoes and blackmailing the groom and of course a lot of dancing! After the main ceremony was over, a huge queue formed to hand over wedding gifts, make pictures with the groom and bride and wish them the best for their life.
The cocktail party at night
For the cocktail party, we wore more western style formal cloth in form of a suit and cocktail dress, again everyone was looking gorgeous which I love about weddings! Unfortunately, the main ceremony left its marks in 30 degrees outside and we didn’t feel too energetic and went home early from the party but we heard it was a blast!
The next day back to Mumbai
On the next day, we took a taxi back to Mumbai with a Turkish family from Berlin that was also invited to the wedding and processed all these new experiences and impressions of this wonderful event. We all needed some time to recharge as we arrived back in the big city on the Indian ocean and decided to just go out for eating for the rest of the day.