Most weddings take place over the course of around an hour or so, with a reception party taking place in the evening. However, Hindu weddings aren't like most weddings. Various events, from the engagement ceremony to mehndhi nights, can take place days, weeks and even months in advance of the big day. These provide the perfect opportunity to celebrate the upcoming nuptials with friends and family. The events really ramp up during the week prior to the wedding.
To kick the wedding week off, we normally start with "Lagan Vadhava". The bride's brother and other close members of family bring a letter to the groom's house containing details of the bride and groom, ie. the name of their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, where they're originally from and the wedding dates and location. The groom's mother will then leave a handprint on the brother of the bride as a sign of acceptance of this letter. He's also fed a handful of sugar to keep things sweet. This signifies the start of the wedding week.
Over the next few days, families host sanji nights. Ladies get together and sing traditional wedding songs, apply mehndhi to each others hands, and the gents sit around and discuss weather, who's related to who and whatever else. And of course, the night always ends with a giant group selfie.
The day before the wedding, three short ceremonies normally take place; the mandvo, mameru and pithi. The mandvo ceremony involves the parents of the couple seeking blessings from the gods to continue with the wedding preparations and ceremony.
The mameru involves the groom's maternal uncles giving gifts to the family. These range from clothes, jewellery, sarees and, most importantly, loads of sweets!
The pithi involves the ladies of the family applying a tumeric and chickpea flour paste to the groom as a way of cleansing him before the big day. These tend to get way out of hand as the groom soon finds out!
It was an absolute pleasure photographing these days and events, it is always great to spend a fair amount of time with subjects and try and capture the mood of celebrations and festivities of a wedding week.