A Big FAT Indian Wedding

I'm now going to attempt a short description of the recent Indian wedding I attended. More specifically, it was a Bengali wedding. Calcutta lies in the state of West Bengal, hence the type of wedding. A typical Bengali wedding will last for 3 days. I'm told that a Gujerati wedding lasts for 7 days! So it varies according the region. For Soorjya's and Ishita's wedding, the 1st day was the big one, where most of the ceremonies, sound, music, and dance were carried out. Unfortunately, it was also the day that I missed out (read other storey).

Soorjya & Ishita

On this day, the groom will head over to the bride's place, where all the festivities will take place. In our case, dozens of ceremonies were performed (to describe each and everyone of them would take a lot of time, plus I don't know them). A lot of food was served, and from what I've been told, the spread was sumptious and very rich. The couple and guests then mingled after this meal. By this time, it was night already. More ceremonies were performed and the guests stayed over for the night. In Soorjya's (groom) case, he and Ishita (bride) did not get any sleep till 5am the next day.

Well wishers

The 2nd day was meant to be a 'quiet' day in this event. There would still be ceremonies to go through, but nothing of that scale compared to the 1st day. On this day, the groom will take his bride to his home and she would now stay there 'forever'. However, they can't sleep in the same room yet.

Sumptious & rich food!

For the 3rd day, more ceremonies and more food! There was a reception at the groom's place for the guests and a buffet meal was served in the evening. All the guests came to wish both groom and bride a happy and fufilling life together. It is only on this day onwards that both groom and bride can sleep together, as they're now known as husband and wife.

They can finally sleep together!

I know I've probably missed out many important aspects of the wedding (gifts, customs, traditions....) so please forgive me. To fully understand every ceremony would take several years of learning. The worse part was that I couldn't even eat the food as I was recovering from a stomach infection and was told to 'take it easy'. Hence I had boiled rice, boiled veg and boiled fish - the plainest food you can find, while everyone was feasting on the richest food ever. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience and given the chance, I would've gotten sick to experience all this again. Wait...well.....perhaps not the sick part.