Wedding Ceremony: Morning Pooja

   The morning of wedding ceremony we had a pooja before the actual wedding ceremony. Pooja just means a religious ceremony or ritual. This particular pooja was a symbolic ritual of preparing us for the marriage ceremony. It is a family-based ritual and typically Deepal and I would celebrate it separately with our own families. My family obviously wouldn't have a clue by ourselves, though, so we celebrated it together. The best way to describe this ritual is good-natured chaos. Everyone crowds around and tells each other what to do, arguing about how and who and what. I don't speak Hindi yet, and neither does my family so we stand or sit around trying to follow what 3 or 4 different people are telling us to do. My mother was a saint, keeping a cheery face and following as best she could. At the beginning of the process Deepal's family chose one person who would be our official translator so it wouldn't be too confusing. But that idea lasted literally about 5 minutes. And then... chaos..  good-natured, of course. ;)

This is the staging area for the pooja and wedding ceremony.

 

And this is the seating area for the guests facing the stage.

Tools of the trade: turmeric and other stuff they use in the pooja. Although I only ever saw them use the turmeric (yellow stuff), the red stuff, and the rice.

So there's a lot of things about the ceremonies that I still don't know or really understand. Sometimes I would ask Deepal during the rituals what different things meant but more often than not he didn't know either. Therefore I suggest you take my account with a grain of salt and remember that it cannot be considered religiously accurate. 

 So here we are all gathered around. Deepal and I are each in front of our own little table with a silver pot. The pot is important somehow, but I don't know how. We never actually touched it or did anything to it that I can remember except after the very end of the wedding when our sisters took the pots home.. to do something with them... yup.

Then, first things first, you gotta put the tikka on:
Mom had Jean do all the tikkas the night before at the Henna Function, and then she was kicking herself because she didn't get any practice for today.  It's not so hard, though, right? Stick some red stuff on your finger, put a dot of it on the forehead, stick some rice to it and then throw the left over rice (already in your hand) over their head. If you don't have any rice left in your hand then pretend to throw some over their head. They'll never know. The rice didn't stick to their head? No problem, it falls off anyway, just tell them it fell off already. :)

Then you gotta give the ceremonial basket of fruit and nuts:

Next comes the turmeric. In the olden days they used to cover the bride in turmeric from head to toe. It works like an antiseptic and it kept the bride from getting sick from all the guests. Nowadays they just do a symbolic bit of turmeric on your feet, hands, and cheeks. And it's important that you brush it upwards on to said feet, hands, and cheeks. ..not sure why, though:

Different women take turns putting the turmeric on the bride. This is Dipti's mother-in-law whom I call Mummy G. She is my second mother in India, and I couldn't ask for a sweeter or more wonderful Mummy. She has actually played the role of my mother in a couple of different ceremonies because my mom couldn't be there, and she really feels like another mother to me. :) 

I am blessed to have so many mothers in my life. Joy was my first second mom, and she's certainly been around long enough to think twice about accepting the title. hehe. I am so happy she came all the way to India to celebrate with me. 

Once everyone took turns putting turmeric on me, then Deepal's family went through the same steps with him. First he got his tikka, and then his mother gave him the ceremonial basket of fruits and nuts:

Next came the turmeric:

Hehe, at some point the red stuff from the tikka got mixed into the turmeric and Deepal looked like he'd been eating some very messy hotdogs with ketchup and mustard. :)

            After they put the turmeric on the both of us they brought some water and kind of washed it off. It doesn't come off easily. I admit I was a little stressed about having to change clothes, wash my face, and re-do my make-up for the wedding ceremony. Especially because it was something of a surprise that I was going to have my cheeks stained yellow. ;) Shortly after taking the following pictures, Deepal and I were off to change as quickly as possible for the next part of the ceremony because we were already running late. Which is normal in India, really. EVERYONE went to change clothes actually. Everyone except my family because getting them into one saree for the day was enough. ;) This morning pooja started about 2 hours late because there was only one woman to dress my mother-in-law, mom, sister, Joy, and me. I'm not sure if she dressed anyone else. She may have. Next up: The Wedding Procession (and then after that the ceremony)



Wedding Portaits

Here are some still portraits from the wedding. Hooray! 

Bob and Joy, Mikolo, Me, Mom, and Jean

In the picture above my mom is wearing a scarf and crown on her head that they put on both mothers as part of the ceremony. I don't actually know what it symbolizes, but they later put them on me and Deepal during the ceremony.

My Mom:

Bob and Joy: My Marriage Encounter Parents :)

I picked out everybody's clothes. They just had to show up and wear 'em. :)

Vidhan (cousin) with Shlok and Rhea (Dipti's kids), and Arisha (Priyanga's child)

Deepal

Deepal

Deepal and his older sister Dipti

Dipti and Deepal

Deepal and his Dad, otherwise referred to as Pa. :)

Ma and Pa, a great example of a loving marriage

Ma and Dipti

Ma and Pa, Dipti and her husband Gaurav, their two kids Rhea and Shlok, my mom, and Deepal and I.

The Doshi family: the very close family of Pa's brothers and their families.

Ma's side of the family. :)

Dipti and her husband Guarav

Guarav, Me, Deepal, and Dipti :)

 
 The Happy Couple:

Wedding Day 1 : Henna Function/Sangeet

      A very traditional Hindu wedding can last 5 -7 days. Every day there's another function or ceremony all in preparation and celebration of the final wedding ceremony at the end of the week. In our case we had just a "small wedding." It was two days and about 250 people attended. To my western mind it was a big wedding.

      The first day of our wedding was the Henna Function/Sangeet. The Henna Function was an opportunity for all of the family and close friends to get henna on their hands in celebration of the wedding. My incredibly elaborate henna was done the day before and took 8 hours to put on. The bride's henna is the most time-consuming, and by doing it the day before I was better able to enjoy the festivities at the Henna Function. 

Here is the room we rented for the Henna Function. It has a bunch of mattresses on the floor with some pillows and some chairs along the side. Pretty much everybody sits on the floor. Although chairs were a general necessity for my western family. This is early morning before everyone came. About 5 or 6 women came who put henna on all the guests.  

Here our families are praying before the henna function began. Both Hindu and Catholic prayers were offered for the day. And then while we waited for guests to arrive there was a bit of discussion about what Jains (a sect of Hinduism and what Deepal's family is) believe.

Here I am cuddling with my new niece, the very lovable Rhea, while we wait for guests to arrive. Then...

Let the Henna Begin!

To put Henna on the guests took about 20 - 40 minutes a person depending on the design. My family all got Henna for the first time. I didn't mention that it tends to look like an odd skin disease once it starts to come off. hehe. I'm sure they would have indulged anyways. Right? :)

Rhea getting her Henna. Her parents asked special permission from the school to allow her to wear it since it is typically against the rules.

My sister had two women working at once, one on each arm. As a result she had two different designs for each arm. They were both nice, though, and there's no rule about matching designs.

My mother had the same henna artist as I did do her henna. It is just as important for the mothers to look beautiful as it is for the bride. So my mom's henna was more elaborate and took around 45 minutes to finish.

Here is Joy showing off her henna.

Once you have Henna on your hands you have to leave it there for a good 2 hours or so. And you can't touch anything or you might smear it. So this meant that I fed my mother and sister their lunch. Most of the guests arrived after lunch, though, so there wasn't a lot of feeding to do. ;)

Deepal's Ma and Mikolo

Mikolo was a good sport and even got henna on one of his hands. The guy design of a circle in the middle of your palm with your pinky and ring finger nails also covered. No one told me that it doesn't come off your nails until they grow out, I swear. : D 

Here's Bob showing the circular design on the palm of his hand.

Here Ma, Dipti (Deepal's sister), and I are being silly and remembering the old tradition of covering your head. As a new member of the family, traditionally I would always have to keep my head covered. And in her youth, this was what Ma had to do all the time, even while cooking in the heat.

Part of the henna festivities was to have this woman come and play the drum and sing. Prior to the event she gets a list of everybody's names and relationships and then she makes up songs about everybody present using the tunes of popular bollywood songs. Everyone really enjoyed it. I couldn't understand what she was singing, but people would explain to me, and generally she was making fun.

If she sang about you, you had to get up and dance. And it was pretty funny to watch us westerners try to follow the moves of the Indians, I'm sure.

Here I am trying to follow Deepal's aunt, Shimta Kaki. She was great for coming up with lots of dance moves, and she coached me from the side a number of times when I had to dance with other people. :)

Here Deepal is dancing with his mother. We were supposed to kind of act out what the singer-lady was singing, and here I think he's begging his mother for permission to marry me. hehe.

Haha, I'm playing hard to get in one of the songs. :)

Before the wedding Deepal's mother spent hours making bracelets and necklaces for my mother to give to people at the henna function. If my mother were a typical Indian mother she would have known the protocols, but since she's obviously not, Deepal's family took great care to take care of her and the things she was supposed to do at the wedding. Here she is handing out the bracelets to some of the women.

The Sangeet

The Sangeet portion of the function happened in the evening after everyone had already done their henna. We served everyone dinner, and then the dancing began. :) Traditionally the sangeet would be a whole function all by itself, and families can spend thousands of dollars on entertainment for their guests, hiring outside professionals to do dances, magic, just about anything. Our very loving cousins took the time to learn several dances for our entertainment and made a show for the whole family to enjoy. 

This was one of my favorite dances. :) The guys were really great.

The next couple of pictures are of the dance Deepal and I did for the show. We only had time to rehearse about 3 times before we had to perform it, and one of those times was about 15 minutes before we performed. woo. It went well, though, and everyone really enjoyed it.

Here I'm doing a lifted cartwheel with Deepal. The expression on Priyanga's face while we did it was really great. :) Deepal and I wanted to do a little something that showed our training. ;)

Here's a couple more pictures of the dances our cousins prepared. :) They made the evening really fun. :)

First cousins in Deepal's family and many other Indian families are actually considered to be more like brothers and sisters, and are often referred to that way. It was a little confusing in the beginning when Deepal told me he had one older sister, but then would speak about his brothers. Now that I've met everyone I can see how close they are and why they would refer to each other that way. :)

After the last dance it was time for everybody to get up and dance. :)

Next came some speeches. Pa always writes a poem for special occasions, so he read a poem he'd written for Deepal and I. Then completely unexpectedly the microphone got passed to everyone in my family (Mom, Jean, Mike, Bob, Joy, and me) and we all had to say a few words to everyone. Nice of them to let us know that was coming... ;P

At the end of the evening my mom gave gifts to all the brothers and sisters of my new parents-in-law. This is part of tradition. We decided to give hand-mixers. It was a tough choice to decide because pretty much everyone already has everything. 

As part of the gift giving process my sister gave each family member a tikka. Daughters have a lot of social obligations in a family. This was one my sister was happy to learn and do. She placed a red dot on their foreheads with some rice. It's a traditional thing to do at any ceremony.





After the Henna Function was over most of the family went to the nearby hotel where the wedding ceremony was going to be held the next day. We had to leave the henna room by 10:00pm or so, but the party was far from over. Everyone goes to the hotel and shares rooms and stays up all night talking and joking.  People don't go to bed till 3 or 4 in the morning sometimes. It's like one big sleepover. I was a bit of a party-pooper in that sense. I knew the next day was going to be very long for me and I was in bed much earlier. No good yawning and having dark circles all the next day!

Well, that was pretty much day 1 of the wedding festivities. Stay tuned for pictures of the actual wedding ceremony. :)