next year in marienbad

There’s a certain L’Année dernière à Marienbad feeling to a traditional Hindu wedding. This picture pretty much captures that. Up on the stage, the bride and groom are deep into the ritual, the videographer is illuminating things, people are sitting and watching, walking around, and having conversations. The band doesn’t seem to be playing. My memory has been jogged by the little dixie cups on the floor that we had just had a nice fruit juice shortly before I snapped this.

[Addendum: another shot from earlier in the wedding from the stage, behind the bride and her father, looking out into the wedding hall seating area.]

henna body art

One custom that’s popular at Indian marriages is the decoration of hands (and sometimes feet) with henna (aka mehndi). Below is a snap of Gayatri’s hands. The feet at the bottom of the picture belong to Krishnan. Judging by the floor and its place in the sequence of photos, we are at the groom’s family’s house. Krishnan, Sandhya, and I delivered the bride to her new home in Madhurai. She had already stored the phone number on her mobile weeks before labeled “my home”.

As a bonus, here I am being given a dhoti in exchange for the bride and the wedding night mattress which we transported from Trichy on top of our car. The groom’s brother-in-law is on the left.