Welcome to The Wedding Travelers!

The next day was one of the most fun parts of an Indian wedding: the mendhi! Mendhi, more commonly known as henna, is a form of body beautification. A paste is made up of dried leaves of the henna flower, and then it is applied to the hands. When the paste first goes on and is wet it appears dark green.



As the paste dries, it turns black, and gets hard.



In order to let the colour get darker, you need to leave the paste on as long as you can. You can put on a mixture of lemon juice and sugar to keep the paste moist and sticking on the skin.



The designs are always different, and each hand is different. It’s really good fun to see all the ladies going around and comparing their patterns.


Here’s a shot of me that Rob really likes and wanted me to put up! You can see that I got my hands all covered in mendhi too, my favorite part of Indian weddings :)



The house was looking fab.



Then the girls started getting ready for the Maya. They made up a decorative design out of coloured powder to place in front of Kimmi’s feet.


It started off with Kimmi’s mom putting some oil in Kimmi’s hair with a small bunch of grass.



Then everyone took turns applying a paste made up of turmeric powder (which is called haldi in Hindi. If you’ve read my article on Hindu weddings you’ll realize that this Maya ceremony is essentially the same as the Haldi ceremony, just a different name for Punjabis!) and water.



Even covered with yellow goo, Kimmi still looked gorgeous and oh-so-happy.



Her mom tied a special bracelet around her wrist.


All the female sisters and cousins helped out.



Then it was time for the Chura ceremony. The chura are the special red and beige bracelets that a bride wears. Generally they are worn for as along as possible after the wedding. For some brides it is for a few days, for others it is a few months. Here the male uncles all touch the chura as they sit in a bowl of milk.


Then the brides maternal uncle puts the chura on.



And by now you should know what comes next. Party! Kimmi and her dad had a great time dancing together, with her mom looking on between them.


Even the grandmas get into the action.



Wedding houses are always lit up with gorgeous lights. Check out how spectacular the house looked.



And finally the kalirehs were tied on by the female cousins and sisters.



Kimmi hits her kalirehs above the heads of her un-married cousins for good luck, in hopes that they will get married soon.



According to a Indian bridal magazing we picked up here in Delhi, the shape of the kalirehs has a symbolic meaning. The top is shaped like a coconut, to show that the bride will always have food in her new home. There are metal pieces hanging from it, to show that she will always have wealth.


And a final shot of her gorgeous chura against her beautiful mendhi.



At this point all the events leading up to the big day had been completed. You could just sense the anticipation, as people tried to head to bed early for the wedding ahead. That means that dinner was held at 9:00 PM, instead of 11:00 PM! Lol. Indian people definitely tend to stay up late! We ducked out early, since we knew that we’d be getting up around 5:00 AM, and needed a ton of sleep. And it was well worth it, because the next day was just spectacular. Stay tuned for that!

Category: Weddings

Tags: chura, dancing, haldi, indian wedding photography, jalandhar, kalirehs, maya, mendhi, photography, punjab, sikhism, travel, weddings

Alright, everyone, I think it’s about time we added a bit of “wedding” to our “travel”! While we were in Vietnam and Thailand our minds were more on traveling than weddings. But pretty much the moment we got to India things changed. We logged on to the internet to find a very exciting message from Gavin, Rob’s long time friend from all the way back to elementary school. It turned out that Gavin was in India as well for his cousin’s wedding. We had told Gavin about our travels and what we hoped to do with The Wedding Travelers, so he let us know that he had a wedding for us to go to. The stars aligned, the timing was perfect, and we managed to book a flight out to Assam.

To tell you the honest truth, we knew nothing of Assam, beyond me recognizing the name from a type of tea I’ve had back home. A quick check in the Lonely Planet Guidebook told us that Assam is in the North East of India, and is a world renowned tea producing region.

It’s certainly not a region that many backpackers make it out to, and it’s even a bit sketchy, in that there are separatist groups in the area, but we knew that this was the purpose of our trip, to seek out new types of weddings, and so we didn’t even hesitate to make the journey.

A quick flight into Jorhat, landing in an airport that is honestly the smallest I’ve ever seen, and then the incredible hospitality began. At home in Canada when we attend an Indian wedding we adore the fact that we are always treated like family. We weren’t sure what to expect, being that we are really the furthest thing from it, crashing a wedding where we have never met the bride or groom before, but we were treated incredibly well. I’d even go so far to say we were downright pampered! So I’m going to start off by saying an enormous thank you to the families of Runa and Arjun for all their amazing hospitality. We hope that one day we’ll meet up with them all again!

Now down to the wedding. Let’s first introduce you to the wonderful people who made the hook-up with this wedding possible. This is the one and only Gavin (he's half Indian, in case you were really confused about his relation to the groom)



The first time I ever met Gavin was right after he returned from a previous trip to India, and he was incredibly sick. Honestly, he looked like he might collapse at any moment. But since then I’ve had the privilege of meeting up with him many times afterwards, and he got over the sickness and turned out to be a great guy. We give him huge props for hooking us up with this wedding!

And next, Gavin’s cousin Talya. Rob has met her a couple times previous, and I had heard her name mentioned in conversation, but never had the chance to meet her. It turns out we have lived about 10 minutes away from each other our whole lives in Edmonton, and we end up meeting in Jorhat, Assam, India. Go figure. But I need to give her an enormous thank you for all her kindness in showing us around, lending me a ton of clothes and shoes so I didn’t look like a total dweeb, and just generally being incredibly entertaining. Here’s a shot of her teaching the chef how to “pound it”.



And now the stars of the post, the bride and groom. This is Arjun, Gavin and Talya’s cousin. Doesn’t he look like a Bollywood star?



And the gorgeous bride, Runa. I adore this shot of her, so serene and peaceful. And at her own wedding too! Would you believe it?



So it wouldn’t be a wedding if there wasn’t some form of rushing around. Rob and I arrived in Jorhat in the afternoon after flying from Calcutta. We had been up since very early in the morning, we tired and worn out. And the moment we arrived and said hi to Gavin and Talya, I was whisked away to change into some Indian clothes and head over to the mendhi. It was a very low key and calm event, which I was very glad for. And the mendhi artists here do some amazing work (P.S. If you are reading all this and haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, check out the Hindu article under the Wedding menu at the top of the site. It’s still a work in progess, but it explains a lot of this stuff!)



After all the girls had their mendhi finished, it was back to the house so that they could change. That’s one thing about an Indian wedding. If you’re properly prepared, you never wear the same thing to more than one event, which means some days you might change 3 times. I, of course, was not that well prepared, so I just chilled with Rob and Gavin, who had a strenuous afternoon of walking down the road to buy some beers.

Back to the wedding location for the Sangeet. At home this had usually been just a dinner and dance party, where everyone just has a ton of crazy wild fun. Many of the weddings we have been to have been Punjabi weddings, and they are notorious for being partiers. The Assamese are much more reserved, I’ll have you know. And the evening was a quiet one, just a relaxed cocktail party. Some music did break out at one point, though it didn’t last very long, thanks to some terrible DJ-ing. But one moment that was quite memorable was when a traditional Assamese dance broke out. It was unlike any Indian dancing I’ve ever seen, and the movements were very bird-like, in a sense. It was really wonderful to see!


And then the next day was the ceremony day. Here in India the ceremony takes place in the evening. That’s very nice, in terms of keeping things cool, but makes our job 100 times more difficult! Nevertheless we managed to get our flashes out and do our best to capture some of the crazy events that were going on. The night started out with the arrival of the groom’s family to the bride’s family’s house (where all the wedding ceremonies took place). They were greeting with the largest display of firecrackers I’ve ever seen. And fire safety regulations are pretty lax here in India, so they were setting these huge fireworks off just meters away from us. Kind of scary, but it sure got the adrenaline going!



Then what happened next is something I’ve never heard of before, so I’m going to attribute it to the Assamese for the time being. If anyone knows of anyone else who does this let me know!

When the groom’s family got out of their cars to walk up the path to the house they were absolutely bombarded with rice thrown by the bride’s family. Naturally I had to be right in the thick of it to get some good shots, and was hit by the stuff, and boy, does it hurt! But it was hilarious to watch.

The groom is accompanied by his best man, who carries an umbrella to protect him. Arjun is the one on the right of the two young guys in white suits.


The groom’s family had come prepared with their own rice to counter-attack, but they weren’t expecting to be showered with soap foam! Arjun’s mom got it pretty bad!



Then things settled down and the bride’s family performed an aarti with Arjun to welcome him into the home.



And here’s something that we will never seen in Edmonton. The ceremony took place in this absolutely enormous structure that was built on the property for this purpose. It was entirely made of bamboo poles that were covered in fabric. I would say it was about 40 ft high and 150 long….rough guess. Huge, is all I can tell you. And it looks absolutely spectacular. The ceremony was performed under the mandap, which is the little tent-type-thing, and it was gorgeously decorated with tons of fresh flowers.



At Hindu weddings there are always many offerings to the gods. Here they are set out, and those little dishes that they are on are actually made out of banana trees, which we thought was really fantastic.



One important part of the Hindu ceremony is when the couple exchanges garlands. If you look closely at what Arjun is wearing you’ll see that he has a wreath around his head. I believe this is an Assamese tradition, and the wreath is made out of Indian basil.



Another new tradition that we haven’t seen before is that the couple’s hands are literally bound together with string. I absolutely love this shot, and the way Rob processed it. It’s so simple, but I really feel like you can sense the emotion and meaning.



The entire ceremony is performed in Sanskrit, which meant that Arjun had no idea what was going on! Poor guy! But he trooped through, and Runa even translated for him once she came.



The entire ceremony under the mandap took just over 2.5 hours, and for the first hour Arjun was all by himself. You might think that is an insanely long time to be performing a marriage ceremony but this was actually a heavily shortened version, and people told us of weddings they were at recently that lasted about 6 hours. Wow. Thankfully there were guys here that were serving snacks so we didn’t get too hungry.

One ritual that we have seen many times is that of pouring ghee (clarified Indian butter) into the fire. I believe that this is a way of offering the gifts to the gods, by turning them into smoke that will go up to the sky. Don’t quote me, of course, but that’s what I’ve been told! Here’s a great shot that Rob got of Arjun pouring the ghee into the fire (which he did innumerable times throughout the night)



At home the ceremonies are generally indoors, and because of that the fires for the ceremony are generally very very small. So when we saw the size of this roaring blaze, we were quite surprised!


After all the ceremonies were over it was time to eat dinner. But not for Arjun and Runa. They went and paid their respects to their ancestors, and then to all of the elders present. It was hours before they were able to go and eat something, but they never once looked unhappy about it, so major props to them.

The next day was for the reception. We made our way to the house around 3:00PM, which was an hour later than we were told to. And we still ended up being a few hours early. Such is the nature of Indian Standard Time! But we had a fantastic afternoon. We ate some amazing food, had fresh jalebis made for us (no pictures of that, since we were too busy eating, but I’ll take a picture of jalebis soon to show you all what you’re missing out on), had some incredible chai, played with some puppies and just generally sat around enjoying the peace and quiet. We were expecting things to really pick up and get going once the reception officially started, but we were in for a surprise. Nothing really changed for us all evening! We sat by a fire, chatted, and watched the streams of people go by. This is a shot of where we sat on the left, and a good idea of how large the structure was



And the evening for Arjun and Runa was another long one. They sat inside the tent, in front of this massive and gorgeous tree, and greeted all their guests. All told apparently around 1500 people came, but not in the sense that guests come to a reception in Canada. Here people would walk into the tent, greet the couple, go and have dinner, and then leave. And they just never stopped arriving and leaving all night. So at one time you could look around and think there were only a couple hundred people present, but they were different people all night. Very strange, but also very smart! This one shot here pretty much sums up the events of the reception.



You can see that great tree, Arjun and Runa standing on their platform, and the guests streaming by.

Here’s a quiet moment near the end where they were actually able to talk to each other!



And then it was all over. It was certainly much more subdued then we are used to, and as a result all of the family members involved with the wedding seemed very relaxed and calm. The whole thing had a very peaceful air about it and compared to the chaos of Calcutta, this wedding in Jorhat may as well have been an oasis for us. We were so honored to have been a part of it all, and to have seen everything we did. We were even given these amazing gifts as we left.



They are little metal dishes that are generally used to put offerings of masala and paan and whatnot onto. Then there are packets of Assamese tea (which we can’t wait to make when we get home) and some little towels that are used when they want to be respectful (this is what I was told, and I’m clearly doing a terrible job of explaining the meaning, but I hope you get my drift). Isn’t that the most fantastic gift ever? We were so excited to get something so meaningful, and that will always remind us of our time in Assam.

Well, there’s the wedding in a very condensed form. There were, of course, many other little ceremonies, with varying meanings, but we tried to just highlight some of the differences we saw. The Assamese have some very unique traditions and we were very happy to get to see them!

And as if to reinforce the way weddings just bore down upon us as soon as we got to India, last night as we were in our room in Varanasi, we heard this incredible racket, and run out onto the balcony to see what was going on. It was a barat, which is the procession of the groom and his family to the bride, and it was incredible! Here’s a quick video to give you an idea



And while we’re just throwing up videos, here’s a neat one of the rhino in Kaziranga.

(same thing for this video too, I'll put it up as soon as I can!)

Well, I hope that keeps you all occupied! We’re staying in Varanasi a couple more days, and then will be making our way south to see the Ajanta caves. So many more neat things in store!

Category: Weddings

Tags: aarti, assam, dancing, fire, food, mandap, mendhi, photography, weddings