A letter to my bride-to-be bestie…..

A dear friend of mine is getting married. And as she recounts tales of her last minute wedding shopping woes, I reminisce back to my own  pre- wedding topsy- turvydom.

An Indian wedding is invariably an elaborate, extravagant, rackety, drawn- out affair. It can protract from as little as a week to a month or more. Guests usually number in the thousands. The trousseau needs at least half a dozen people to lug around. The menu may run into a few pages, at the very least. The groom’s party makes a grand entrance, quite often in a cavalcade of luxury cars. Of course, it is all subject to the amount of moolah at your disposal. The more you have, the more you burn.

Nowadays, the brides and grooms have taken it all upon themselves. From what they want to wear on “D” day to whom they want to invite…They want to plan everything to the T…. All adding to the anxiety that is already building ….Thanks to the expectant life changes that are in store….

Not so long ago, weddings were planned and executed by the “elders” of the family. The parents did important things like the in- person invites and “gold- shopping”. The immediate uncles may help in venue bookings, caterer quests and bargains, haggling with the decorator or the “flower- guy”, booking air and train tickets for out-of-town relatives, printing invitation cards…..

The ladies in the family help with the shopping- clothes, jewellery, shoes, make-up, post- wedding wardrobe….the list is virtually endless. Then there are the parlour appointments, the beauty treatments, the henna undertaking…

You as a bride or groom can soon lose sight of the whole point of this exercise. The marriage gets lost in the “wedding”….

So, here I am….writing to my friend, who is due to be “hitched for life”. To the love of her life.

Dearest Ash,

The days leading up to the wedding are like a LSD laden  haze…(not that I would know what LSD feels like!)…..

You seem to be the center of the universe. Everything and everyone seems to revolve around thy holy- self!

Your appearance and well- being is paramount. Nothing else matters. Parents and grandparents get emotional and weepy-eyed at odd moments and embarrass you at jewellery stores and boutiques. You can shop till you drop and yet nobody seems to mind.  Mum packs sandwiches and juice for your shopping trips when previously she constantly nagged you about buying “unnecessary” items.

Girlfriends constantly call you to enjoy all the excitement and attention vicariously. Guy friends tease you constantly, but also suddenly become extra- nice and chivalrous. In short, you are bestowed with so much attention that your ego inflates to gargantuan proportions and you start inhabiting a fanciful world in which you are the queen of all that you behold.

Well, my soon- to- be- bride friend; enjoy the care and tending for as long as it lasts. It will all come to an abrupt reversal as soon as the nikah is done/ thaali is tied/ rings are exchanged- whichever is your drill!

The minute the rituals and ceremonies are complete and the guests vacate ….. you are transported to an alternate universe; WHERE NOTHING IS THE SAME! You are no longer the centre of anything. Far from it. Even the so called “honeymoon” can be a surreal experience that whizzes by in the blink of an eye.

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