Episode 44 | Can you have a feminist wedding?
Planning
It's Fern here, before I pass you over to the lovely Sundari, I just wanted to say that whatever type of wedding you are planning - this is such a heartfelt, honest post that I think lots of Brides will relate too. It's also a fascinating insight into a type of wedding ceremony I knew very little about, so grab a cup of tea and some cake, sit back and enjoy...
Hello everyone, me again. Hope you’re all having a great start to your year so far and getting all good to go for spring to be sprung! I personally cannot believe how quickly time is flying by.
So, over the past few months here on Rock My Wedding I’ve spoken in depth about our lovely suppliers, venues and style, which has all been mainly linked to our Sunday humanist wedding at Waddesdon Manor.
However, today I wanted I’d give you an insight into planning our Tamil Hindu wedding because I’m pretty darn sure there aren’t too many other blog posts that’ll explain them to you! I promise to try my best...
LETS GET SPECIFIC
You’ve all heard of Indian weddings. They’re big, loud, colourful and lots of fun. Well, that’s all true, I’m not here to say otherwise however, I find myself correcting a lot of people that I’m not having an “Indian” wedding in fact, but a Sri-Lankan, Tamil, Hindu ceremony. Yes, that’s a mouth full, but it also very accurately describes what we’re having. I’m of a mixed heritage, with my father from Sri-Lanka and my Mother of a Sikh Punjabi background from Malaysia, however I’ve mainly been brought up within the Tamil community despite not speaking the language. My parents both came over to the UK to study and funnily enough met at a Chinese New Year party during University. They had their own battles to fight when they chose to marry but are here today with two grown children, one married off and the other underway. It’s easy to conclude Indian-Asian families are very proud of their heritage and I think it was always the deal that if you’re marrying me, we’re having a Tamil wedding. That was just the expectation. I’m sure if I felt strongly enough I could have altered how big it would be or not have it at all, but growing up with that pride instilled in myself, I also did want to celebrate my marriage to Andy with this traditional event. Disclaimer!!! I’d like to point out now, before I dive into what our wedding will be, I am by no means an expert on Tamil weddings, I can only write about my understanding and experience in attending and celebrating them.OUR SRI-LANKAN CEREMONY
Sri-Lankan Tamil weddings are usually one day. There might be smaller religious ceremonies that happen before hand, but they aren’t part of the main event and are typically limited to just the immediate family. The ceremony must be set on a “good” day and the “thaali” (the marital necklace) must be tied during a specific time during that day. Usually, the family consult with a priest to find out what days suit the wedding, along with the best time during that day for the “thaali” tying. This is what my family did, though depending on how religious you are, there are a number of other considerations that can be checked too. We just stuck with a good day and the "good time." The actual ceremony itself is hugely traditional, filled with religious acts, meaning and is spoken by the priest mainly is Sanskrit. So, to help with our non-tamil guests understanding, whilst in India I bought orders of service which explain to the audience each section of the ceremony. Though due to the noise and hectic nature of the wedding, most people won’t be able to follow it until the “crescendo” of the ceremony, which is the “thaali” tying, I keep mentioning. You still with me? ;) Basically, it’s a ceremony, which lasts about 5 hours and includes snacks and drinks throughout as well as vegetarian meal for all the guests at the end. In the beautiful images with this post you’ll see the marriage of Lavinia & Sav whom kindly sent in the pictures from their Hindu Tamil ceremony for yours and my viewing pleasure. You can see the colour, detail and sheer amount of traditional acts carried out. You can see the beautiful flowers, gorgeous décor and almost feel the chaos and noise of it all. So exciting! Lavinia, arrives at the wedding in her light pink saree, after a few special prayers and acts, she goes off to change and returns for the “thali” tying in her gorgeous burgundy saree (the koorai saree) usually gifted by the Groom to wear for this special moment. Think of it as two wedding dresses, but the second one is especially from your man. The thaali tying is the pinnacle of the ceremony and all the acts before hand are building to this very loud moment. It’s similar to the exchanging of rings in a civil wedding. I’ve spoken a little about the venue in a previous post, Painshill Park, Cobham. The key for our ceremony was having somewhere, which could fit a large number of guests, allow a fire inside the event space and are experienced with “Asian” weddings. Painshill offered all of this and even has held many Tamil ceremonies there before.SO, HOW DO YOU COORDINATE A 350+ GUEST WEDDING?
Your heads are probably spinning from the sheer amount that needs to be organised for this event. So how on earth am I coordinating mine? Quite a daunting task but the honest answer...with a lot of help from my parents! Key things we had to book, a priest, a manavarai stage company, the traditional instrumentalists, vegetarian caterers, hair and makeup, outfits for everyone, traditional wedding cake...the list goes on! Luckily a lot of the “traditional” bits, my Father stepped in, I had only a few things to research. I found the perfect staging company, Om Creatives, who were so kind, creative and a delight to work with. They’ll be covering all the decoration inside from the flowers, carpet, staging and more but because of our rather large guest list (might I add by choice!) we’ve had to grab in Academy Furniture Hire for lots more chairs. For this event, it really is about the sheer amount we need to purchase to make sure everything ticks by smoothly rather than booking a long list of suppliers. The Tamil ceremony has a humongous list of things that we need to buy such as special coconuts, banana leaves, silver platters, a rose bush...Not to mention that we needed to purchase around 20 sarees for Andy’s family and friends to wear on the day. We hit most of the saree purchasing including my two marital sarees in India, I’ve added in a few iphone pictures to show off how many we bought. It really was all about the sarees! With all the key suppliers booked, what is left is a long shopping list, but bit-by-bit we’re slowly getting through it. This weekend we’ll be purchasing Andy’s traditional outfit, which will be fun!