Wedding Craziness (Sept. 11)

The first weekend we’re here and we are informed that the principal’s son of the elementary school is getting married on Sunday afternoon. Now at first we’re thinking this will be no big deal for us, we don’t know him so we’re not going to go to this wedding. That was our plan but evidently here in Nuzvid and all of India for that matter everyone who is remotely acquainted with the family is invited to the wedding. Soooo, since we met Mr. Moses on Friday, we were invited to his son’s wedding on Sunday! Funny how that worked out…Anyway, we dressed up and headed to this wedding. When we got to the church the wedding was just starting and we took our seats. When we looked at the program we saw that the service was going to be a long one…That suspicion was confirmed later when Mr. Enjati, who we met on Friday, told us that each person sitting on the platform was going to talk for at least 5 minutes each. At an American wedding that would have been no big deal because there are only about 2 people up front that would speak. At this wedding though, there were about 20 people all sitting in a row behind the altar. This was in addition to the 3 groomsman and 3 bridesmaids. And so the service began…

The service was pretty much the same as an American wedding in both look and how it was performed. Even the bride had a regular wedding dress and the groom was in a tuxedo. It differed in time though, by about an hour. We sat there for about 2 hours while everyone up front said their little piece and then there were the vows and other stuff. There wasn’t a kiss or exchanging of rings but there was an exchanging of garlands of flowers. These garlands were huge! They put any Hawaiian leis to shame! That part of the wedding was super cool and during this time girls were coming through the church handing out handfuls of yellow flower petals to through at the couple as they walked out of the church. It was really interesting to see the subtle differences between this Indian wedding and an American one.

Like I said before the wedding service itself wasn’t very different from what we know from home but the reception was something I’ve never seen before. The entire elementary school yard was transformed into a festive party with banana leaves woven around trestles with bright colored ribbons intertwined. Chairs were everywhere for the more than 1500 guests to sit and mingle while we waited for the bride and groom to change clothes and come to the reception. I guess what they do here for a Christian wedding in India is have a “Western” styled wedding service and then the reception is very traditional Indian. There was a large multicolored tent set up in front of a stage with huge speakers blasting Hindi music to where if you were within 100 feet of the speakers you really couldn’t talk to someone. A huge elaborate sign that had the names of the couple decorated the stage. (It read “Amit with Linnet”) Also in the center of the stage was gaudy throne like, 2 seat, couch that had bright red suede upholstery with the rest of the couch covered in cold leaf.

People milled about talking while we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. This took about an 1 hour 45 min. Once the bride and groom arrived food was served. This was not in a normal way though. Feeding 1500 people is not an easy task and so what they did was feed people in “shifts”. The elementary school cafeteria holds about 300 people and so every 20 minutes or so 300 more people would rush into the café and sit down at long tables. People only sat on one side of the table so that service with metal buckets of food could move up and down the tables to serve with ease. This was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! To me it felt like we were all eating at a prison or something similar to one. Food was plopped down with ladles or large spoons on large (18 in), foil covered paper plates, which each person had, by the servers as they practically ran past! It was very chaotic and frenzied! We of course ate with our hands and finished within 15 minutes. The food was extremely good and filling. One of the curries was beef though and I must say I did not enjoy that one at all… The reason being is that they had not bothered to only put meat into the curry but had left small pieces of bone mixed in with the curry. Needless to say I avoided that one! When we got up we rinsed our hands outside at a row of water faucets and the next group of guests crowded into the café to eat.

After that it was quite late Zach and I ended up leaving and going to bed. We fell asleep with the sounds of fireworks going off from the wedding. All in all it was so amazing to see this different way of having a wedding. This was by far the largest wedding I’ve ever been to and I’m sure that we will see at least one or two more before we leave. An Indian wedding is certainly worth the experience but it’s not relaxing!

Blessings!