Actor Dia Mirza set the ball rolling for dropping patriarchal traditions from marriages when she got married last year. A woman priest performed the rituals and the kanyadaan, which is suggestive of a man giving away his daughter, was completely ditched.
By Reya Mehrotra
Recently, a wedding made headlines after a couple from Tamil Nadu decided to tie the knot in a unique venue—one unaffected by the pandemic restrictions— metaverse.
A metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.
Dinesh Sivakumar Padmavathi and Janaganandhini Ramaswamy invited 2,000 people to their virtual wedding and a Hogwarts-themed reception in metaverse with the help of a start-up called TardiVerse.
The couple even got Ramaswamy’s late father to ‘give blessings’ during the wedding by creating a 3D avatar that looks similar to him. The wedding also included special edition NFTs including artwork that featured backgrounds and attires from Harry Potter.
The metaverse wedding, said to be Asia’s first, is not the only one that has changed the way we celebrate the big day. The pandemic saw all kinds of wedding ceremonies—at-home weddings, small weddings and zoom weddings, among many others. As the Indian economy shrank during the pandemic, the weddings also got slimmer.
For some, it was a boon, as it meant a small, hush-hush affair with an intimate gathering, while for others—who liked to do it in the traditional large-scale manner—the wedding vows turned into woes. That’s when the great Indian jugaad stepped in to save the day and ideas, such as the metaverse wedding, emerged among couples and wedding planners.
It took another couple from Tamil Nadu to prove that matches are actually ‘made in heaven’. In 2021, a video went viral that showed the couple dressed up for their wedding and seated in a SpiceJet flight along with 161 other guests to witness their wedding. As the flight flew over the Meenakshi Amman’s temple in Madurai, they performed the wedding rituals. The entire flight was booked by the family for two hours to fly from Madurai to Bengaluru.
Bizarre weddings have not been the only themes trending in the Covid-stricken world—shattering traditions of patriarchy seems to be something that picked up as well. Actor Dia Mirza set the ball rolling for dropping patriarchal traditions from marriages when she got married last year. A woman priest performed the rituals and the kanyadaan, which is suggestive of a man giving away his daughter, was completely ditched. The wedding was also sustainable, as Mirza champions the cause.
Others followed suit and similar stories flooded the social media soon after. Interestingly, even before the pandemic hit the world, millennial couples had been personalising their wedding rituals and abandoning traditions that are no longer relevant.
Short & sustainable
For 33-year-old Sameera Dahiya, a motorcycling instructor for women, a motorcyclist and a yoga trainer, her wedding had to be all about bikes and sustainability. So, she and her husband Praveen Ramakrishnan, a 40-year-old IT professional, chose Tribal Adventure Cafe, an adventure sports centre, based on the outskirts of Bengaluru in Devanahalli as their wedding venue.
“We met on a bike ride in 2016 and got along and started exploring through biking. Since my husband is from Kerala and I am from Haryana, we wanted our wedding to respect both the traditions and celebrate only with our very close friends and immediate family. We invited all our friends from the motorcycling community and our parents and siblings,” she says.
Dahiya recalls how during the weddings of her elder siblings, her mother had to be admitted to the hospital twice due to the stress of preparations. Hence, for her wedding, she just wanted her parents to relax and enjoy the celebrations. “My husband and I did all the running around and, even as a bride, I was alone and managing all the preparations,” she says.
They had their first function—a Malayali-style wedding—in a temple where only a few people were invited. The temple prasad was served as food. The north Indian-style wedding happened after a few days at the adventure cafe followed by a bike ride to Nandi Hills with the couple’s motorcycling circuit. The same day in the evening, they hosted a small reception at the adventure cafe where they entered on two Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycles.
“It was completely unconventional. We didn’t have a stage set up for us but had pictures of our memories of all the rides we did together, music, dancing and everything that made us feel light and easy. Our photoshoot was also done during the bike ride we had after the wedding. I entered my reception on a Hayabusa wearing my gown. We partied till 4 am. The venue was 80 km from Bengaluru, yet people who mattered to us made it,” she says.
While, traditionally, wedding ceremonies take place at night or during the early morning hours, she says she wanted to tweak it a bit. “I belong to the Jatt community, and my mother got married in the daytime then. But that had changed in recent years as weddings had shifted to nights. I wanted to follow in her footsteps, so we had our ceremony at 7.30 in the morning,” she adds.
To ensure that food was not wasted, they pre-booked the meals according to the number of people and had asked their preference for vegetarian and non-vegetarian food beforehand. They also ensured no plastic cups and glasses were used. For the wedding card, which Sameera designed herself, she says she put up a picture of her husband sitting behind her on her bike.
Meanwhile, for Sonakshi Pratap and Malhar Lakdawala, it was all about breaking the shackles of patriarchy. Thirty-year-old Mumbai-based Sonakshi, who is a financial services entrepreneur, started working since she was 21 years and is a self-made woman. Her husband, 31-year-old Malhar, who owns an AI start-up, was supportive of her and so they decided to abandon the patriarchal rituals from the wedding ceremony that took place in Mahabaleshwar, her hometown. There was no mehendi ceremony, mangalsutra, sindoor, bidaai, chooda or kanyadaan at their wedding.
The most interesting part of the wedding was Sonakshi entering the venue on a horse wearing a 20-kg lehenga. “It was my in-laws’ idea. Since I love horse riding, I was excited to do the stunt. My parents, who were taken by surprise, cried after seeing me,” she recalls. “It was about enjoying the moment as a family. My family was waiting for me to find someone for a long time and when I told them about Malhar, they were more than happy. My only condition was that I would not follow any patriarchal rituals and they gave in,” she adds.
Even the seven pheras of a Hindu wedding were tweaked for equality—they asked the priest to say that they would both care for each other and would both cook for each other as one of the seven vows and they climbed a tree for their wedding photoshoot wearing their wedding attire.
Sonakshi and Malhar met in 2019 through a matchmaking portal and now work together by collaborating through their start-ups. After their ceremony, they wanted to celebrate with their friends and so went for a trek as they both love adventure.
Bridezilla
Brides of the new decade are shedding their shy avatar and emerging as strong women stepping into the new phases of their lives but with confidence and their identities intact. Last year, the video of a bride driving away her groom happily after the bidaai went viral. Sneha Singhi Upadhaya, the bride in the video, later said that since she had driven her now husband Saugat Upadhaya home after their first date, she wanted to do the same after their wedding too.
In 2019, Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner and singer Joe Jonas got married in Las Vegas and Sophie ditched the traditional white gown for a white jumpsuit with a veil. In September last year, Indian bride Sanjana Rishi introduced the trend to this part of the world as she wore a powder blue pant suit for her wedding instead of the bridal lehenga. She said she did so simply because she loved wearing formal suits.
Bengaluru-based Sheetal Shah, 27, who got married to Tejas Shah, 30, a finance head in a start-up, last year, says she decided to be engaged within two months of knowing each other in December 2019.
“I was keen on making my career and travelling solo. Since my two elder sisters are married, I wanted to be with my parents to take care of them as well. But when we met, we instantly clicked,” she says. As neither of them wanted a big wedding or a reception, but an intimate one with only families, they went for a court marriage first and then for a traditional ceremony as their parents wanted one.
