‘The Big Fat Indian Wedding’

It takes five days for a cricket test match to finish.
It takes five days to tally the presidential election results of the US.
It takes five days to die of starvation.

It also takes five days for Dinesh & Ruchi to get married. Well, apparently!!

Who said weddings are simple affair?
Its no simple task especially if it is a Punjabi wedding :-), we all know what all goes around and comes back in a Punjabi wedding.

And mind you, this five-day period has at least two months of planning and preparations behind it! After all, as my father puts it, “Indian weddings are not about two people getting together but about two families”.

For us, the count down has begun. Well, being at the centre stage of wedding celebrations that started a month ago and will continue for another month, I am already getting the jitters and the shocks and everything else that comes along and frankly it is no easy task – with so many people involved, with their egos, mood swings, influence etc.

We are set to have ‘The Big Fat Indian Wedding’ with that distinct North Indian touch and the mehendi ceremony & sangeet & ghodi & band walas & pheras.

A BIG fat Indian wedding. That's what most of us have, full of noise, loads of food and gifts, gold and silk-draped aunts, uncles with turbans, rituals and ceremonies, priests, havans, screaming kids, music and nosy relatives.

People sneer that if a Punjabi has Rs 100, he will spend Rs 1,000 at the wedding. I am not sure how fair that is! But the truth is that Punjabis are big-hearted people who want their guests to enjoy themselves. They’re interested in people having a good time. The bottomline of the wedding — a question of izzat and maan-maryada.

But organising a decent wedding here is tougher than the blessed state of matrimony the couple is stepping into. Starting with the selection of the wedding card, trousseau, venue, bookings, transport, confirmation, menu, gifts, guest list, orchestra, arranging for the relatives' stay... the "to do" list is staggering.

Hope I will be able to keep up with it to pen down my experiences in this ‘online diary’.