Engagement Ceremony - Our Attire

We attended the wedding of our friend Kasthuri, who is a colleague of Chris'.  Indian weddings are a several day affair and in this case we attended the engagement ceremony one evening and the wedding ceremony the next morning.  I'll save the details of these ceremonies for the next posts, since some of you have inquired about what we wore I'd like to address that first.

As a tourist you obviously don't have to wear their traditional clothing.  However, it is not appropriate to wear some of our Western style of clothing, such as tight tops and pants, shirts with the midriff exposed, low ride jeans, low cut tops, etc.  Not that I wear that kind of stuff, but my point being that you don't want to draw too much unwanted attention to yourself; just being white and walking around with a camera hanging off of your neck is enough.

For everyday purposes in Delhi we chose to wear a mix of Indian and Western clothing.  G and I wore long skirts with a t-shirt type top and a shawl covering most of our arms and upper body.  Chris wore pants (not jeans) with a kurta.  In Vrindavan we wore more traditional clothing, such as saris and punjabis for G and I, while Chris went with a dhoti instead of pants.

For the engagement and wedding ceremonies we got more dressed up.  While I didn't wear super fancy special occasion saris like everyone else, I did wear very nice silk saris.  A big thanks to my friend Lila Katha for letting me borrow these.  I only have cotton and synthetic saris, which she said were not fancy enough for a wedding.  She was certainly right and I am so glad she helped me out with this.

Chris borrowed two formal outfits from our friend Sumit.  It's basically a longer, more fancy kurta with matching drawstring bottoms.

G didn't have anything formal enough, so we went shopping for her our first morning there.  What a neat experience it is to shop for clothing!  You are essentially waited on hand and foot - it reminds me of what it must be like to be super wealthy and shopping at an insanely expensive clothing store in NYC or L.A.  You sit down and are offered a beverage while a very knowledgeable store clerk sits on the floor on a padded mattress type thing and just starts laying out item after item.  You tell him what colors and style you like and he fetches it for you.

Originally G wanted a sari, but then changed her mind after the clerk pulled out 6 different ones for her.  Honestly, we were okay with that because they were more than we wanted to spend.  They only had silk and it was about $40 USD.  We found out later on that it is difficult to find saris for children, and of course later on G changed her mind about wanting a sari.

She bought an adorable salwar kameez for the engagement ceremony, not quite fancy enough for the occasion, but adequate.  Her favorite and most worn purchase is the shawl.  The salwar kameez comes with a scarf, but I had to use it as a drawstring for the pants, apparently they don't come with the string.

G's other favorite purchase of the day, which she bought with her own money that her Oma and Grandpop gave her, is this bracelet.

While doing the usual tourist stuff in Delhi we saw tourists wearing a variety of clothing.  Some were in regular Western clothes - just pants and a top.  Others did a nice job of mixing the two cultures, like we did.  We felt we blended in the best we could while respecting the culture.