Weddings: Two For One

Internet connection was slow tonight, so this post will be the first part of a series that will return hopefully tomorrow. Enjoy the pictures from our first Indian wedding!

For months, Jenna and I have been hoping to get the opportunity to go to an Indian wedding. On Sunday, we attended two: a Hindu wedding for Shami, co-worker of our roommate Jaime, and a Muslim wedding for Ali Akbar, the grandson of my barber.



We went to the Hindu wedding first and got there on a school bus provided by Jaime's school for about a dozen faculty members. It was held at the bride's family's home just outside Tirur. By my estimate, at least 500 people were in attendance. The couple placed garlands of white jasmine flowers around each other's necks and walked around the kalyana mandapam--a raised platform with a gabled roof that serves as an altar--four times. Here they sit in repose just after the ceremony, waiting for pictures to start.










Credit Jenna with this shot. She used her sharp elbows to get to the front of a jostling pack of spectators, who surrounded the kalyana mandapam like papparazzi. The wedding contained a number of ritual offerings and exchanges, most of which were lost on me. The groom did give the bride a gold pendant to hang around her neck and she gave him a gold ring. Finally, the groom placed a swatch of red paste on the bride's forehead at the hairline where her hair is parted, a Hindu symbol that she is now married.







A picture of the crowd that had descended on this quiet home for the day. Plastic chairs were arrayed in meandering lines all facing the altar, but when the bride came out of the house,most everyone stood.








The meal after the ceremony was a traditional Keralan sadya, a meal served on a banana leaf and eaten with the hands. They held the meal across the street at a neighbor's house, under a makeshift canopy of thatched plam fronds and coir fiber. More than a dozen long tables accomodated the large number of guests. An efficient troop of servers stalked around the tables, doling out steaming piles of rice and spicy sambar and cups of sweet payasaim.