A Bengali Wedding.

I'm very pleased to say that my pen-pal Devi has agreed to let me share the pictures she sent me from a wedding ceremony in her community in West Bengal - this is a traditional Bengali Hindu wedding. The captions below the pictures are her writings.

"Weddings are big events here - festivities can go on for days. Marriages are most often arranged and set at an astrologically auspicious time, such as this wedding parade set after the full moon. Before sunrise I could already hear things getting started with the neighbors, whose son will be wedded."

"Before the bride makes her entrance, the groom and his family make preparations for worship in the temple. The crowd was very joyful and it was a real Bengali party, even though the strongest drink you'd find in this group of Vaishnavas would be a straight glass of Sprite."

"I got a sneak preview of the bride-to-be upstairs in her father's house. Ordinarily she is a somewhat plain, plump young lady, but here she is dressed so ornamentally and so radiant with happiness that she looks like a gandharva, or angel."

"The bride meets the groom for the first time. She covers her face with betel leaves to symbolize the humbling effect of her husband's presence."

"Two of the bride's brothers lift her and circumambulate around the groom. She pelts flower petals at her husband-to-be, and his friends must dart in to 'shield' him from her love."

"A cloth is placed over the couple's heads and their eyes meet for the first time...in private."

"Now everybody else gets a sneak peek, too!"

"After the pandit offers a prayer to the elephant god Ganesh, he puts a coin and a spot of mehendi in the groom's right hand. The couple's hands are united with auspicious substances such as sweet grass, purified water and strings of flowers. This ritual is called panigrahana hathlewa."

"Now the father adds his hand in a gesture of blessing, giving his lovely daughter away."

"If you’ve ever wondered where the expression 'tying the knot' came from, it probably came from Hindu ceremonies in which the bride and groom’s clothes are literally knotted together for the rest of the night. The Vedas say that there is a knot in the heart caused by the false ego which thinks 'I' and 'mine' separately from its Creator, and when a man and woman are united the knot in the heart tightens. One thinks, 'I am this body. This is my wife, my family, my country, my religion,' and so on. But if a man and woman unite for the purpose of serving Krishna, they can work cooperatively to undo the illusion of material existence and thus progress spiritually. Then one thinks, 'I am servant of the Lord. Everything belongs to Him. Let me utilize it properly by engaging it in His service.'"

"Here, the bride and groom await the lighting of the sacrificial fire. They took half an hour to recite their vows, which they wrote up themselves and included things like 'always respect each other' and 'no domestic violence'. That's the unfortunate thing about Indian weddings. They take forever. There are a few more rituals after this, but the ceremony had already gone on for four hours, so I made my exit."

Four hours? That's completely understandable. This post was getting a little picture-heavy anyway. Thank you, darling Devi!