Wedding Day

Friday, April 30th


Wedding Day! Last night – Ramiah’s family sent us to another “house” in the village where we spent the night. These houses are structures with many rooms where large families would live together. They were used by their ancestors for that purpose, but they are vacant now – so they use them for guests. Our room was huge. We were up at 6am to get ready for the wedding. Breakfast was at 6:30am.

When we came down to eat – we were taken to a room toward the back of the house with a long dining table that had 12 chairs around it. There were 2 beautiful place settings all laid out right in the middle across from each other. We were served two pastries (one that looked like a muffin and tasted like pound cake and the other was coconut with a cream filling); scrambled eggs; toast; fresh bananas and sweet lime juice. The food was excellent.

At 7am the driver picked us up to take us to the wedding. When we arrived, there were elaborate decorations all around and you walked up a long staircase to enter the building where the service was being held. There were hundreds of people there, but Ramiah’s grandfather picked us out right away and escorted us to the front of the long room. He told us some of the things that were going to happen. When it was time for the groom to arrive, he came to get us and took us back out to the top of the steps to watch the ceremony.

Ramiah arrived on a white decorated horse. There was ceremony at the bottom of the steps and then, he came through an archway and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. At the top of the stairs was Uma. This was to be the first time the bride and groom would meet face to face. She slowly went halfway down the stairs and there was another ritual performed before Ramiah came up to greet her and walk her up the stairs.

(Morning ceromonies)

(The bride & groom meet)



Once inside the building – the traditional rituals continued for the next four hours. There was Indian music playing the entire time. Two of Ramiah’s friends from Chennai quickly befriended us and explained a great deal about what was going on – this was Vino (male) and Mathangi (Ma-tan-gee – female). They both live in Chennai and are also engaged to be married. Around 12:30pm – Vino & Mathangi invited us to go down to the basement to have lunch. A full lunch was being served for everyone at the wedding and you went down at your own leisure to eat. The food was served on a banana leaf which is still commonly used in some Indian homes, but mainly used for special occasions to honor tradition. Vino sat by mom and Mathangi sat by me and they explained everything on the banana leaf. All of the food was vegetarian. There was one item that was too spicy for my taste, but I tried everything.

Once you finished with your meal – they told us that we needed to fold the banana leaf forward if we were satisfied and fold it outward if you were dissatisfied with your meal. We folded ours forward. If you don’t fold the leaf, they will continue to serve more food each time you finish an item on the leaf.

After lunch, the driver took us back to our room to rest for a while before the evening ceremonies. At 5:30pm, we went back to house where we had met the family on Thursday night. Everyone went outside and walked down the street to greet the new bride and groom. There were fireworks and lights everywhere as they made their way back to house – stopping to perform more rituals on the way. Once back in the house – there were more activities for the bride and groom until around 7pm. At that time – we all walked across the street to another house where dinner was served for everyone in the same manner at lunch – but there was a new variety of foods. This time, Vino sat by me and Mathangi sat by mom to explain everything. One of the servers stood in front of me as I ate – very attentive and anxious to know if I liked the food. Again – I tried everything and none of these were too spicy. After dinner we back to the first house and visited and took pictures.

(Evening ceremonies)

(Henna patterns on Uma's hands)

Around 9:30pm, we left with our new driver from Indian Panorama to head to Madurai. On the drive there, it rained quite heavily off and on. But by the time we reached the city – it had stopped. We got to the hotel about 12:30am and met a representative from the tour company in the lobby … settled payment for the tour and got instructions for the next day. We needed to shower that night. Its soooooo HOT in this part of India right now – about 100 to 105 Fahrenheit. And you have to walk barefoot to many of the events so our feet were really dirty. It was 2am by the time we got to bed.