2004-01-09
1 Wedding Pictures {anchor:Wedding Pictures}Here's a quick run down of pictures from Roopeshbhai's and Pragibhabi's wedding....
The 'Grh Shanti' (sp?) is a religios ceremony designed to settle any misalignments among the celestial bodies. The ceremony takes place partly indoors and partly outside. The guest are pretty much spectators, and when the ceremony was done, we had a little photoshoot.
That night there was a 'Sangeet' program where friends and family perfomed a few dances and a talented music group sang well into the night. I forgot my camera, but hopefully we'll get some pictures of that soon.
The Pithi is a little tradition to help the groom look his best. Guru and I were merely watching when my aunt decided there was no reason we should be left out of the fun :-P
The 'Jaan' (though I think it might actually be called something else) is the groom's parade. Roopeshbhai's rode in a carriage drawn by a pair of white horses as his friends and family danced to a live band playing tons of fun music. We even used a good deal of fireworks to celebrate the occassion.
The parade ends at the wedding grounds. As you can see, Pragibhabi's family spared no expense on the decoration, it was amazing! We lost the shoes, but I guess that's part of the fun :-) I was the 'anwar' (sp?), aka the best man, which meant I was constantly teased about becoming the next groom in the family.
Last came the reception. The wedding reception was a little different from the American style. The newly weds spent the vast majority of the night greeting their 800 guests on a beautifully decorated stage. At the very end of the night, the newly weds sat down with all their family and shared a meal.
There were a ton of photographers and videographers so I'm looking forward to getting more media. The videographer brought a giant video camera crane to the recpetion. This allowed them to get grand panning shots of the guests. I can't wait to see that video!
Next time: Malaysia...(I still need to get the pictures developed and scanned!)