The brides version of our Indian Wedding

The brides version of our Indian Wedding by mariasipka

February 17, 2008, 2:02 pm
Filed under: Family, fun stuff, Holidays, jc, Life, maria, Positive, us, wedding | Tags: JC duarte, maria sipka, new delhi, taj hotel, wedding

A Slovakian born Australian marrying a Portuguese born American in New Delhi, India. Sounds like an adventure. The video will do much more justice than me sharing the story with you but until we get hold of an edited version I’ll attempt to write a few words.

The honeymoon in Thailand was pure bliss. Four days of being deserted on a tropical island with white sand, palm trees, hammocks and amazing inexpensive Thai food. I managed to finish the adventurous Indian book I was reading to give both of us a taste of what we were in for. Every day we booked in for Thai massages and one day took a trip onto the mainland to ride elephants and do some local shopping.
We arrive in Bangkok airport around 8pm and our flight leaves for Indian around 2am. Surprisingly there’s a long queue of very colourful, excitable and luggage packed Indians waiting to check in 5 hours before hand! We decide to do some work in Starbucks rather than going into town and check in 3 hours beforehand – which is a record for me because I usually check in 30min – 1 hour before a flight leaves.

So we make our way to check-in and there’s probably around 12 people hovering behind the 3-4 check in counters. With big grins on our faces – we are about to get married after all – I ask the lady whether there is any possibility of getting an upgrade. I tell her we’re getting married in Delhi, show her some documentation and hope that we can have a comfortable seat for the 4-5 hour journey throughout the night. She doesn’t seem to responsive and as a matter of fact she starts to grow a worried look on her face. Another man walks over to see what’s going on and asks us to wait for 30 minutes! It seems that there are no seats on the plane. It’s been over booked. And there’s a chance we may not even get on the flight!

They manage to find us seats by reshuffling some other passengers to sit in the air hostess seats and I’m upgraded to a comfortable seat and JC is left to sit in the middle of the smelliest, misbehaved passengers he’s ever encountered. Afterwards he told me they were slurping, burping, farting and he got his first wif of what I was telling him about – the combination of Indian spices, onion and sweat. Welcome to India babe!

Arriving into New Delhi airport after circling the skies for 1/2 an hour – apparently our pilots were category 2 pilots and not trained to land a plane in fog. Somehow they managed to land the plane with 0 visibility. It was all white. You’d think you were still flying in the clouds and then suddenly you feel a big thud and a few bounces. Thank god we landed! And it was freeeeeeeeezing! Nobody told us it would be 6 degrees in this country. I’d only heard about how hot and sweaty it was. Dressed in summer clothes and thongs we kind of felt out of place with all the scarves, boots and heavy winter coats people had on. The first adventure was going to the toilet before going through customs. Absolutely busting to go I stand in queue, finally get into a cubicle only to find a squatting hole type loo. Great! And then the big surprise – no loo paper. I mean what airport has no loo paper! Fortunately I scrambled around in my bag – no tissues but JC’s socks came into double use after keeping my feet warm on the freezing cold plane trip here.

As you know – India is a very poor place so there’s loads of people living on the streets, young dirty children performing acrobatics on the street paying any money they receive to their pimps and never ending sounds of horns honking. Our hotel was fortunately one of the most beautiful in India – an oasis amidst this chaos. It’s our wedding day today! and we have absolutely no idea what the plan is. I’m lying in our bath. JC goes on a mission to find out what we need to do. And it finally hits me that we’re getting married today. I felt quite lonely lying there and not having our families around. It was time to reflect and really soak up what we had gotten ourselves into.

JC barged through the door all excited and a list of what was to happen. First of all I had to gather up to 8 girlfriends to help me get ready. I went through the list of guests and selected all the girls I knew well or who had just come for this day.Naomi Simson, Emma Brown, Kerrie Liao, Willow Rose Liao, Lilian Kelaidis, Anju Rupal and Birgit Hass all met downstairs in a room reserved for us and there were two Indian men with colourful ‘lolly’ like packets of henna. For the next two hours JC and the girls chatted, laughed, ate, drank and had henna applied from toe to knee and finger tip to elbow. Thanks to Naomi for feeding some of us who had already the henna stuck to our hands. Extraordinarily intricate – after the henna was applied you couldn’t touch anything for 2 hours. It’s like mud to start with, then it dries up and turn dark before it either falls off or you scrape it off. They say that whoever has the darkest henna loves her husband the most. I was determined to have the darkest!

Next, we were ushered back into our hotel room – which was quite small and there waiting for us was a big chocolate mud cake and a dozen roses (we never found out who sent this up to us) and a bottle of champagne. The local ladies organized colourful, intricately decorated saris’ for my girls and then the wedding dress arrived. Wow!!!! As I imagined it. Bright red, quite heavy with all the gold decoration and stitching.

The make-up artist also arrived – he’s an Indian brought up in Germany and now living again in Delhi capitalising on the new rich getting married here. It took him 2.5 hours to apply all the makeup. When you see the photos you’ll know why he spent so much time.

Getting ready was one of the highlights. It just felt so surreal because none of us knew what was going to happen next. Off course there was chaos. The little, tightly fitted blouse (or rather a tank top) didn’t fit. Too much good food in Sydney. So a tailor had to adjust it in the nth hour. I had no jewellery so one of the ladies rushed into the city and bought tonnes of gold trinkets and attachments. And then came the time. We were ready to go.

JC’s precession had already begun an hour ago. Dressed all in white/ cream with a burgundy turban (that was a tad small like an Indian maharacha, he had been entertaining the crowd of 400 or so riding a brilliant white horse on the streets with an electrifying marching band, fireworks, dancing and Sharman’s. Seeing the video afterwards – he looked like a stunned rabbit with his eyes glistening and in awe of what was happening and about to happen.

Meanwhile, the entourage and the bride which looked like a Bollywood actress, made it to the entrance of the ceremony. If only I could describe the setting. Nothing short of spectacular!

Bright reds, oranges and pink material draped over large canopy’s, strings of orange marigold flowers, pillows and lounges, carpets and so many people! Six ladies held up a floral canopy over my head and I managed to shuffle forward trying not to get the trinkets around my wrists caught in my dress. I was told Indian brides don’t show too much emotion. This was the one rule I had to go against. I was laughing my head off and occasionally my mouth wide open in amazement. Especially when I saw JC for the first time. The scene was something out of a fairytale. Both of us stood on a stage with people on each side telling us what to do. We were to be married by a Hindu priest accompanied by a two shamans – one had an orange beanie on his head These men chanted, sang, smoothed bright red powder onto our foreheads whilst bells and other sounds roared in the background. Some of the guests who flew in from all around the world, were dressed in local garb and others had western suits and attire. Camera’s flashed. And people just stared at an experience they’d never had before

After the initial ceremony we moved into a smaller area under a bright orange and pink canopy and sat on cushions cross legged around a ceremonial fire surrounded by offering to the gods. Close to 70 of our friends and strangers either sat on seats or stood capturing the ritual with or without their cameras. This was one wedding where there would be no shortage of photographs as we found out afterwards when checking our emails. For the next 30 minutes we threw a combination of rice, flowers and red powder into the fire worshipping the seven different gods. We exchanged vowels where I pledged I would do all the domestic duties and JC would bring the money in. I asked if we could swap We walked around the fire seven times, touched the feet of the priest – which is a great sign of respect, and shoved coconut jelly into each others mouth. I only took a small bite. I thought it would be quite unflattering to be chewing on a big piece of jelly with my cheeks all exploding. We laughed, giggled, made a few mistakes and before we knew it, we were man and wife with rose petals being thrown at us by our guests.

Next was dancing, eating and celebrating the next few hours away. A famous singer and band were flown in from Rajasthan to perform and the dancing was nothing short of spectacular. All captured on video.

The next four days was a continuation of the celebration in our own special way. We attended every session and thoroughly enjoyed listening to some of India’s greatest talents talk about their country and the incredible opportunity unfolding. The theme of the gathering was ‘a billion opportunities’ and we’ve been inspired to make this country home one day – at least for 3 months to soak up more.

The only regret was not experiencing this magnificent celebration with those we love the most – our family. You were all there in spirit and mind. Whilst it was a day to remember – we vowed to live every day with such intensity.

You can check out selected photos of the wedding at flickr.

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