An Indian Wedding

On my second full day in India I got to go to a wedding! It was beautiful. Because it was a Christian wedding it did not have a lot of the traditional customs you would see in a Hindi wedding. The bride wore a gorgeous ivory sari and the groom an almost metallic looking tux. There was worship both in Hindi and English and then the pastor brought a word for the newly married couple.

There were two power outages during the ceremony but the service continued in the pitch black without the fans working and with the preacher making up for the microphone loss with a full volume yell. Just as the power came back on and everyone’s cheering subsided, I kid you not, a marching band came right beside the church. Not even the microphones would help the preacher now. Every word he said was lost in the clanging symbols, but he kept on preaching. It was a valiant effort but I am pretty sure no one heard him.

What made the day really wonderful was that it was the first time I got to meet all of the girls. They were all dressed up in their best dresses, which had been given to them as Christmas gifts. Some of them were so shy and would not even look at me but others were not at all. I think the funniest moment was when Tara who is 16 came to introduce herself. I thought she was much younger. It is so hard for me to read ages here based off of looks or actions. Usually when I think they are young they are older and vice versa.

Anyways, Tara came to sit next to me during the wedding. The first thing she said was,

“So when are you getting married?”

I was stunned speechless and then laughed a bit.

“Um, I’m not sure.”

She moved on to the next question,

“Ok, then what do you want to be?”

I was looking at her thinking; you’re kidding me right. I have no idea what the answers are to these questions. She could tell I had no answers so she went on to describe what her life plan was. She said she was going to study to become a doctor, then marry off her oldest brother, then marry off her next brother, and then get married herself at age 28. “Well maybe 27,”she said.

Tara’s was the first introduction of many that day and each one was different from the one before it.

After the wedding ceremony we went downstairs for the reception. The number of guests seemed to double when mealtime came. Everybody grabbed a plate and pulled up a plastic chair to eat and talk. The bride and groom entered again and were showered with small foam balls of every color. The bride was now changed into a fiery red sari. It was a wonderful evening, full of color, laughter, and incredible food.


My first Auto-Rickshaw ride was on the way to the wedding! (This is Sumitra who is another Ashasthan staff)


Here are some of the girls awaiting the ceremony to begin.


The bride and groom


Most of the Ashasthan girls with the happy couple