Bending tradition

I recently went to a weekend of weddings that bent tradition - sticking to some and tweaking others.

Some relatives of my wife decided to get married and we were invited. Nothing unusual there.

They come from a Hindu and a Christian background, so they decided to have a Hindu wedding on the Saturday and a Christian wedding on the Sunday - two days full of marriage celebration.

I’d only once been to a Hindu wedding before and that was a much smaller event. This one was full of tradition - the groom arriving on a horse, the brides family stopping him until he “pays” them for his bride and then a long elaborate ceremony. In the evening was the Sangeet dinner, which seemed to consist of basically a set of talent show performances from friends and relatives and then dancing.

It was an amazing day.

The Christian wedding was at a very picturesque old church in the countryside. The vicar (pastor?) was brilliant, very welcoming and very down to earth.

The evening was a break from tradition. In a traditional wedding dinner there would be dished up food brought to the table followed by speeches and then the cutting of the cake. They flipped things around a bit.

They started with dancing into the room to the Backstreet Boys and then cutting the cake. They did a “photo dash” which involved them running around the room to have a group photo with each table (worked brilliantly!). After this they did the speeches - and even these were not the traditional speakers. We had the bride, the brother of the bride, the mother of the groom and the groom.

The food was brought to the table but it was in bowls and you dished up what you wanted, rather than having it already on the plate. This also worked really well. No-one was queuing, everything was smoother and quicker and you chose what you wanted so much less waste.

And then was the traditional DJ after - although this was a mixture of Western and Indian music.

Everything was captured by a small army of photographers and a drone - that sometimes went a little bit too far to capture things.

The planning (and cost) that must have gone into this was incredible and it made for an amazing wedding. I will certainly remember it for a long time.

Sometimes it is good to bend tradition.