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East Indian Wedding
Just picked up an East Indian wedding booking. What is the best way to educate myself about East Indian Wedding rituals? Other than doing web research, I plan on watching some Bollywood movies, someone suggested Monsoon Wedding to me. Are there any other Bollywood movies with extensive wedding scenes (hopefully entertaining as well) that I can learn something from? Thanks.
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Religion followed by the Bride and Groom (broadly Hindu, Muslim, Christian....)
The ethnicity (Depending on the province / state this family is from)
Bollywood wedding based movies that come to mind primarily depict Punjabi weddings (folks from this region/state within India).
If it is a Hindu wedding for most well to do families it is a 7-10 day affair and in some cases key events could be intersperesed over a period of a month.
You would need to find out what religion do tehy follow, what sort of weeding rituals would be followed and also ask bride and groom about key moments that they think is absolutely essential (for eg in a Hindu wedding the moment that the husband applies vermilion on her forehead is a very special moment).
If you could update this thread with some more relevant details then some of us from India could help provide more insight.
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It's a Muslim wedding here in the North America and it'll be three days, the Henne, the Ceremony in a mosque and a reception. BTW, I just watched the Monsoon Wedding and it's great.
I'm from Bangladesh which is next to India. Now I'll tell you what I know. Its not same but some what similar from Bangladesh to India to Pakistan, etc.
Ok so Henna, basically it's like the bride/groom sits there and people come and put hena on their face, hands etc, and depending on how many people are at the party. You really want to get a list of the close family, mom, dad, sister, brother, closest uncles/aunts cousins etc. Now to make it easy for you, and this would help a lot, during that part, use a tripod because most of the time, they sit from one direction while putting the Henna on, and take the pictures for each person. This will make it a alot easier for u. That's the only time I'd ever use a tripod during a wedding. Then you can upload them all for proofing and the client would pick out the family members and the ones they want. That way you don't have to know who's who when taking pictures. That's what I did.
For reception/ceremony it'd just be like American. Ceremony is from the brides side and they mostly sit there the whole time. People wonder around come talk to them, take pictures w/ them etc and they eat. There's usually no paper work because in America we have to go through court before anyway. But some will still do the traditional way and sign the paper, etc. They eat, they dance. bla bla then the bride/groom leaves to the family's home or since in America, they leave to hotel or something.
Reception is held from the groom's side. This is when the groom brings his new bride and shows to people, people that were not invited to the wedding since it was the bride's side throwing it. So now all the people he knows get to see her. During reception, traditionally they walk around. Some just sit there like the wedding ceremony but I remember I walked to each table introducing my wife as she handed a rose to each of the women. This doesn't happen much but I work for a florist and I got a great deal and people were really impressed by this. They might dance too depending on the family. Some are too strict some don't care.
That's pretty much the basic. Where in North America are you? I am in DC area. You can contract me I can show you some pictures to give you some ideas.
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They are East Indians not East Asian. Thanks for the offer to show me pictures, but I'm in Canada, long way from DC.
BTW, may I ask you how to price out East Indian weddings? My daily fee is $1K, I charged this East Indian couple $3K thinking it's 3 day's work (Henna, Ceremony and Reception). But after talking to the couple, I realized it's not really 3 full days but they agreed to the $3K fee anyway.
So for future East Indian wedding inquiries, I'm just wondering how much to quote. Do you think quoting them 2 full days of fee for 3 day's work is reasonable?
No, I didn't mean physically show you pictures. I meant give you links that'd help you.
Well good luck to you. Hope they turn out well.
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Sure, please give me the links, much appreciated.