this past weekend was saagar’s cousin renu’s wedding in detroit. i am now completely sold on indian weddings. while they require a ton of planning, organization and, for lack of proper knowledge of all the religious powders, pastes, flowers, statues, etc, let’s just call it – “stuff,” the outcome is always stunning and so so fun. this was hands down one of my favorite weddings yet. let’s see some photos!
festivities kicked off on thursday morning with a religious ceremony where renu is officially ‘made the bride.’ we had lunch in their beautiful backyard and ran last minute wedding errands until the mehendi in the evening, which was a big dinner party for the bride’s side and we all got decorated with henna to look top notch for the weekend
asked on the plane home if it's a real tattoo
for a clumsy girl, not mucking this up was hard
a rare real smile from the bride
my indian outfits for the weekend were arranged for me by saagar’s family. i told them i felt like an indian barbie because everyone was constantly having me try things on, pulling at my ears for earrings, giving me bangles to wear and making sure i wore the right outfit at the right time. some of the outfits i borrowed from his cousins padma and aishu and some were stitched for me in india and brought over. how amazing is that!
on friday we caravaned to detroit. i really wanted to take a photo of the car i drove up in because it was hilarious. saagar drove a huge van, i rode shotgun, and behind us were about 14 indian ladies all dressed up. it was quite a sight.
saturday was the big day, kicked off by the baraat where the groom’s family dances (across the hotel’s parking lot, in these modern times) to meet the bride’s family. there are drums and horns and clapping, it’s great fun. everyone walked through the hotel to the wedding venue, which i only captured on my phone.
indian weddings are so hilarious to me because at any given time, only half or so of the people are actually paying attention. everyone is talking, walking around, standing, getting coffee…the ceremony that renu had was very traditional so was almost 2 hours long and all in sanskrit. i love watching the rituals and asking about the significance – some of them are really fun to watch – like when the bride and groom compete to pull rings out of a jar and the bride’s brothers try to keep the groom from winning by holding him back.
indian barbie finds her ken
after lunch, the bride’s team hunkered down to finish details for the evening. specifically, my project was to help with the seating arrangements. i know, i was freaking out that this wasn’t done ahead of time either, but didn’t want to stress renu out with any questions (like WHY?!). we finished making the seating chart and placecards for 425 indians at 6:30pm. we definitely deserved those cocktails!!
at the reception, there was a photo booth (which is becoming standard at weddings now, isn’t it! i’m glad, they are so fun). i loved watching some of the aunts and uncles who totally wouldn’t get it – they would either leave the booth after the first photo, or they would have a whole strip of photos in the same pose.
they also had something i had never seen before – a flip book station. they had a white screen, a video camera and a bunch of random props. they would take a 6 second video of your group and then turn it into a flip book. i was skeptical at first, but it was a HUGE hit. as a bragging point, we made “the best flip book we’ve ever seen” according to the vendors where we staged a slo-mo fake fight. you can see how hilarious megha thought it was (who was a star of the book herself)
and finally, what’s a wedding without a classic…
PHOTOBOMB
iliveinabetterplacethanyou.com 
so, so beautiful. I’ve now decided Mike and I are going to have an Indian wedding. So colorful.