CEI-Inde-Perou

On Saturday the 5th, a girl from the village we work in invited four of us to a wedding.

We went there at 5 p.m as she told us to do. There were a few children, women and drunk old men. The bride was waiting in a room inside the house. We waited outside in the courtyard for two hours, where we were served tea (Tchai : milk, black tea, sugar and spices, we drink at least three of those every day) and where we played with the children. Most of them spoke little english but enough to understand the aim of the games we played.

Then we were invited to eat with the other guests.

They probably made food for 100 people at least, rice with various delicious dals (lentils, beans... cooked in sauce) and sweet rice to end with.

When everyone is full, the ceremony can start. The groom, dressed in a very strange way, comes to see the bride, after having been welcomed by the bride's sisters and cousins. He gives them money and they give him sweets and scissors to cut a red ribbon.

The groom is on the right

The red ribbon

The bride has to stay inside her house and when she gets out, she cries and never shows her face, covered with a shawl (she is leaving her parents and her home so she is considered to be sad), even if she is happy.

The Pandit (religious man in India) says the Puja (sacred words), the bride sits next to the groom and a very complicated ceremony starts with various things to drink, to eat, various moves to do, various knots made in a red ribbon between the two people getting married.

Of course the bride's parents are there (the father is covered with money, as their son in law, and the mother wears her most beautiful jewelry). On the next photo you can see the mother standing up, the groom's head and the golden shawl of the bride :

We left there, at midnight, knowing we had to work  the next day.

A wedding in India lasts for two days at least...