Indian Wedding

This is wedding season here, just like summer is in the U.S.  However, their weddings involve about 3 days and have marching bands, horses, and one time we even saw a horse driven carriage with the couple in it go by our apartment.  I had assumed it was another holiday in this land of holidays and told our driver that a parade had gone by our house, and he is the one that told me it was a wedding procession.  Actually, just yesterday coming home from shopping, the rickshaw I was riding in got caught up in a wedding band march...it was kind of cool, we were riding right beside it.  Before marriage, the couple consults with someone who tells them when the best time for them to get married is and even last night when Jeff and I went to bed, there was a wedding, with fireworks and the works going on right behind our building at 1 a.m.  Weddings are all day and night here, but I guess with 22 million people, there does need to be 24 hour wedding ceremonies in order to share the facilities.

We were invited to the wedding of the daughter of one of the people on Jeff's project, which we attended not long after Thanksgiving. We were only invited to the last day of the ceremony which had been going on for a couple of days.  As you can see by the photos, they wear bright, beautiful colors in their ceremony.  We didn't understand anything said, but every so often they would bring by some colored rice and every once in a while everyone threw rice in the air....the girls enjoyed that part of it although I had to get one of them to stop throwing it directly at the people in front of us.

Part of the ceremony they encircled the couple with a rope and another part they wash each others feet ( that would be kind of nice especially if there was a foot massage along with it).  Afterwards, there was a time for people to come give advice/blessings/ whatever to the couple....I don't know exactly what my husband is saying, it could be anything.  By the way, they were married at 12:36 p.m.