It is the wedding season in India, and hundreds of weddings are planned or are going on. Nobody chooses to get married while "the gods are sleeping", so most weddings are during this auspicious time of year. Kuldeep told us that at least 70% of Indian weddings are still arranged marriages. The traditional wedding follows an established path, and can last over many days. We first encountered one when visiting Fatephur Sikri, where we investigated loud music and drums. This was quite a small wedding by Indian standards, but everyone involved was dancing around the groom, who was on a small horse. They were all having a great time!
 |
| Part of the band |
 |
| The mobile loud (ear-splitting) music machine, adding to the sound of the live band above. |
 |
| The groom arrives on a horse. He must appear solemn at all times. |
When we stayed at the Bal Samand Hotel in its huge grounds we learned that most of their income came from big weddings held there, rather than the hotel. We are now at our last stop here in Udaipur, where there appears to be a steady succession of huge weddings going on. Every day at the city palace huge wedding venue structures are being assembled or torn down, and on our boat outing on lake Pichola we visited the island of Jagmandir, where preparations for another grand wedding were underway. The whole island is transformed into a large party venue, with everything outdoors because it never rains of course!
 |
| Elephants on the edge of the island, and wedding colours. |
 |
| Beautiful fresh flowers everywhere |
 |
| Assembling a golden tree. |
 |
| Pavilions and a large stage with powerful sound systems beyond. |
 |
| After sunset the whole island lit up, with searchlights and music we could hear from 1 km away. |
Kuldeep explained that this was not a particularly large wedding, but probably cost in the order of one million dollars (NZ). We were told several times that big weddings hire entertainers like Jennifer Lopez or Cirque du Soleil to perform for multi-million dollar fees. The most extreme weddings cost hundreds of millions of dollars!
It seems a bit crazy to spend so much on weddings when there are so many other ways the money could be spent to improve life in India. Indians do like to party, though.
