India Trip 2013 - Wedding festivities!!

After a long journey to India, you would think that we would get chance to relax, but that was not the case in our situation.  I went for my cousin's wedding where the ceremonies were going to start from Feb. 10th, just 5 days from the time we landed!!  That meant no resting for us. We had to go for shopping right away to buy clothes for all of us....so that started our 1st week in India.

We did pretty good in terms of shopping this time because we were able to cover a lot of places in the 1st week to get most of our shopping done.  I bought a lot of my dresses, my mom bought her dresses, and we got the traditional man's wear for my dad and brother ordered since theirs needed to be stitched....not bad for 1st week!!

Then comes the 2nd week for the wedding ceremonies to begin.  There were total of 7 events for this wedding which made me think of this wedding as a preview of some Yash Chopra  movie!! It was seriously celebrated in a grand way with ceremonies like Siddhchakra Pujan (Big Puja), Aanu(explained later), Sangeet Sandhya, Mehndi, Wedding, & Reception!!

Siddhchakra Pujan is considered one of the most auspicious pujan in Jainism and the purpose behind performing this pujan was to give the blessings and happiness to the couple who was going to start their lives together.  It's considered to be one of the longest Puja as well.

Moving on, the next event was Aanu.  This event is basically performed by the bride's side.  Aanu is a term for the things that the bride's family gives to the bride, when she gets married, to take to her in-laws house.  The things can be from anything to everything which includes clothes, jewellery, shoes, makeup items, crockery, etc. etc.  This was huge!!  We all helped my cousin decorate the terrace with her stuff and it pretty much covered the entire terrace...which was amazing!! The fun part was when the groom also came to look at the Aanu and he jokingly said that he might have to shift his wardrobe out of the house in order to fit everything that my cousin was bringing :).  It was fun.

Next event was the Sangeet Sandhya!! My favorite favorite ceremony which I enjoyed to the fullest...best show put together, hands down!!  For those who don't know what Sangeet Sandhya is, here is a short intro.  The meaning of this ceremony lies within the name itself, "Sangeet", which means music and dance.  This ceremony is usually performed by either bride or groom's family.  In this case, this event was organized by the bride's family.  Since my mami (aunt & my cousin's mom) is a famous singer in Ahmedabad, there were some brilliant singing performances by well-known Ahmedabad singers.  I don't remember everyone's names but one of the singers was Bhumik Shah.  He sang songs like Chaand sifarish from Fanaa, Teri Deewani by Kailash Kher, and more.  One of the other singers sang very emotional Gujarati song "Dikari mari ladakvayi" where my aunt joined later singing with him.  While the song was being performed, I noticed that all my masis (including my mom) was crying :(.  This song is really that emotional that it just makes you melt when you hear it.  Kudos to my mami who sang it so bravely for my cousin and didn't break down during the song!!  After the singing performances, then comes dancing performances.  This included performances by us cousins, my cousin's friends, the groom's friends, bride's side family members, and finally the performance by the bride & the groom!!  After everything wrapped up, party was not over yet :).  We all had dinner together where the food was just too delicious!! The menu was so good that I literally ate everything more than I could handle (in intervals, of course, otherwise I would have exploded)!!  The menu had Indian style Pizza, Pasta, Sizzler, Chole Bhature, Jalebi, Mango & Kiwi shake, is your mouth watering yet??  Anyways, that was the end of the day with an amazing night of fun and entertainment.

We were all very tired from the Sangeet Sandhya but had to pull ourselves together for yet another ceremony of Mehndi.  This event was kept at a place called Choki Dhaani where they have made the place to give a village-like atmosphere with Khatlo (a kind of a village bed) and all.  During Mehndi, there were also singers performing mehndi songs while Mehndi (henna) was being applied to the ladies.  Here is a snippet of my Mehndi.

We had a day break in between Mehndi and the Wedding which was a good time to relax and do some last minute preps for the wedding.  The wedding was going to take place in the evening, but before the wedding there is one more ritual that was going to take place early morning at 6 am.  And that was Ganesh Matli & Pithi (also known as Haldi rasam).  This ritual is performed by mostly women where the Ganesh (Ganpati) puja takes place in the morning and after that ritual, Pithi (Haldi rasam) takes place where we apply Turmeric on the face, hands, legs of the bride.  The purpose of Pithi is to apply Turmeric on the bride so that her face glows at the wedding.

The Wedding itself is broken down into a lot of rituals where the groom's side family comes dancing to the wedding venue, the bride's family welcomes the groom, and the groom & his friends demand to see the bride before entering the venue otherwise they'll stand outside until we bring the bride out, stealing groom's shoes and then demanding the money for returning them, and the list is never ending since there are a lot of wedding rituals itself that take place during the wedding.  All of us cousins had planned to steal the groom's shoes at the entrance when they demanded to see the bride.  Unfortunately, that plan failed and groom's friends secured his shoes in a room which was guarded by his 3-4 bodyguards (his friends, of course!!)....there was no hope of snooping into the room to steal the shoes :(.  Then we found out that one of the groom's friends was wearing his shoes to distract us thinking that the shoes are still in the room.  Unfortunately, by the time we found out, groom's friends brought the shoes to him.  But of course, one of the other cousin was a fighter and she tried to snatch the shoes from the hands of the friend who was carrying it.  That plan failed miserably too since we couldn't snatch the shoes and one of the ribbons on the shoe broke in the snatching process!!  NOW, the groom was refusing to give even a penny for that shoe...but all of us cousins hovered around him like a helicopter and didn't let him go until he paid us Rs. 5000 (it's like 100 bucks).  Well, he wasn't agreeing but obviously we weren't going to go down without a fight.  After much debate, and negotiation, and the pressure from the adults to come to a settlement, we fetched Rs. 3000 from him, that too when we didn't have his shoes in our possession :P...hahahaha.  This was great fun!!  Want to see how the wedding mandap looked?  Here is a snap! (please google up the meaning of "mandap" if you don't know, because it'll be too big of a description here)

Moving on to the Reception, a final event that was going to conclude this wedding festivities.  This was more relaxing event because it was hosted by the groom's family and we didn't really have to do much except to be present, take the pics with the newlyweds, and stuff ourselves with the absolutely delicious food they had!!  The weather was pleasant that day and we took a lot of family pics that evening which have become memory for life :).

Wow, I didn't realize how much I wrote until I previewed the post!! This is what happens when I get carried away in writing but it was worth it since I wanted to share the wedding that I attended and also explain the ceremonies associated with the wedding.  Apart from the events I wrote about, I forgot to even mention that we had a bachelor party for my cousin, and also get-together from 1 week before the wedding almost every night, so we got to see a lot of relatives during the wedding.  I guess, instead of making this post even longer, I will stop right here and share with you some more trip fun in my next post.  Hope you all enjoyed reading!!