Engagement Ceremony

Kashuri Sankar Weds Bidisha!

I've been to Indian wedding receptions in the past held in America, but never to any of the actual ceremonies, which for my friends always took place in India.  (I still remember Milit returning from India and surprising us with his new wife, Sundhya!)  The American receptions involved lots of dancing and a ton of traditional food.  Kasthuri's wedding was no different, except that he had ceremonies and receptions held in two different parts of India.

Kasthuri is from southern India, while his bride, Bidisha, is from Delhi (northern India, for those of you not up on your Indian geography).  The engagement and wedding ceremonies were held in New Delhi, both events including food afterwords, which we weren't able to fully take advantage of due to jet lag issues, which is a whole other topic.  The big wedding reception was held in Tamil Nadu (southern India) a few days later.

The ceremony was supposed to start at 5pm; we showed up at 4:55 and other than the priests we were the only people there.  We are used to "Indian" time and should have known better!  We were eventually greeted by Bidisha's father, who took us down to her waiting room for us to meet her for the first time.  My first impression was "I love her!"  She is a delightful, nice, thoughtful person and I look forward to us becoming friends when she moves to America with Kasthuri.

Kasthuri finally arrived (an hour late) and there is a big to-do with all sorts of offerings from Bidisha's family and a procession to the stage setup inside.

It is customary for the women to wear flowers in their hair, which are offered to everyone.  G of course loved this.

 The bride's family offers all sorts of gifts to the groom and there are several rituals that go on that I can't even begin to explain, plus half I didn't understand.  Thankfully we met a couple, Dinesh and Priya, who  befriended us and explained a lot of what was going on.

Below is Kasthuri (with one of the priests in front of him) and his parents to the left and Bidisha's parents to the right.  They are surrounded by female family members who appear to struggle with each other over who gets to do what.  It's quite amusing and I wish I understood what they were saying.

One of the items given to the groom is a new suit, which he leaves the room to change into.  Meanwhile the bride makes her first appearance of the evening.  Here is Bidisha entering with her aunts and friends accompanying her.  I wish I had photographed the beautiful and intricate mehndi that adorn her arms and feet. 

She then sits on the platform and goes through similar rituals and is offered gifts from the groom's family, which also includes a new sari, which she then eventually leaves the room to change into.

Kasthuri then re-enters, wearing his new suit, sits back on the platform and goes through another series of rituals.  He then gets off the platform and sits with his family.

Eventually Bidisha re-enters, wearing her new sari, and goes back to the platform for her next series of rituals.  At no point during the engagement ceremony do the couple sit together.

By 7pm we were becoming extremely tired, having not yet adjusted to the time zone.  We held out till 8pm, at which point we began making our way out.  It's a bit of an insult to not take food, so we shared a small plate of some fried item, which was tasty, and departed about 8:30pm.  We crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel from sheer exhaustion.