Wedding ceremonies reflect our age-old traditions and customs. And the rituals show our respect towards our roots and their underlying association with spirituality and dharma. The wedding ceremonies have been there since time immemorial making them irreplaceable and priceless.
But in the past few years, Indian weddings have changed a lot. While the wedding ceremonies have remained more or less the same until now, it is the addition of new age norms and a few interesting twists to the traditions that have added more fun to the traditional event. Today’s couples seem to enjoy this trend of tweaking traditions a bit, making things more enjoyable for everyone and engaging at the same time. And since a little deviation from conventionality is not a crime, the elders in the family too don’t seem to mind.
This article talks about a few such very interesting ideas, which if added to your wedding ceremony can elevate the overall experience to a whole new level and can make your wedding memorable for everyone who attends it.
The ideas to make your wedding unforgettable
1. Wear offbeat colour wedding dresses
Keep aside the reds and pinks. Make a style statement with your wedding dresses by wearing lehengas and sherwanis of offbeat colour. Discuss between the two of you in advance and decide on your favourite shades. And if you two are planning custom-made wedding dresses for yourselves, then nothing like it. Select exclusive bridal couture from Tarun Tahiliani or Maneesh Malhotra and wow the guests with your dressing sense.
2. Mega entries to the ceremony
Gone are the days when the bride would be escorted to the ceremonial stage or mandap by her family members under chadars, cholis or flowers with her head and eyes down. While traditional bridal entries are still quite common, the new-age brides take this as a chance to make a statement with their confidence. To make your entry to the mandap very special, plan a grand theme-based Maharani-style entry on a palanquin with a group of men dressed as royal guards carrying it on their shoulders and another group leading the path with blazing mashaals in their hands. You can also plan a Maharaja-style entry for your husband-to-be as well by arranging a grand elephant ride for him with men dressed as royal guards escorting him with brandished swords in their hands. Theme-based entries like these can make your wedding ceremony truly unforgettable.
3. Hire Women Priests to solemnize your marriage
Do you want to surprise everyone with an idea that could make your wedding unforgettable for life? Well, here is the idea. Your good old purohit ji may be very good at his job, but hiring one or two female priests to solemnize your marriage, especially, performing the homas and pheras would be a great idea. Your guests are definitely going to love this idea as it would be a new experience for most of them. Hire qualified female priests and give them a mic, so that when they chant the mantras loudly at the time of performing the wedding rituals, the air is filled with positive vibration.
4. A popcorn cart beside the mandap
The Indian wedding ceremonies, especially, Hindu weddings are long events that take quite a few hours to complete. With hundreds of rituals that are followed including the pujas, homas and pheras, it is often a tough ask for relatives and invitees to sit quietly for so long. That’s why placing a popcorn cart beside the ceremonial stage or mandap can be such a great idea. While you take your marriage vows for hours at a stretch, your relatives can munch on these silly snackies and watch you two perform the rituals one after another. Besides, popcorns are good for their health too.
5. Giving meaningful gifts
Giving away meaningful gifts can make your wedding memorable for your guests and invitees. Don’t choose useless items that are more likely to be thrown into the dustbin. Choose useful items such as a colourful potli, a leather wallet, a personalized coffee mug with some heart-touching message, a beautiful cushion cover, or a pricey hand towel. Don’t gift away these items as you buy them from the market. Make them personalised with fabric works, stitches and inscriptions. Create a hashtag that includes both of your first names and stitch it on the wallets and potlis and print the same on the coffee mugs. This would help people remember your wedding for a long time.
6. Choose different flowers for different rituals
If anything could really make your wedding memorable, that would be your wedding photographs. Photographs are printed memories stored for life. And to make these photographs perfect, choose different types of flowers for different rituals in your wedding ceremony. The idea is to match the flavour of the rituals. For example, choose yellow marigolds to decorate the venue for your Haldi ceremony. Choose roses for your bridal entry, a mix of yellow and red marigold garlands for the mandap, etc. Use kilos of them for generous sprinkling and decorating the walls and pathways. Flowers hold a special place in wedding decoration, and they should be picked according to the tone and thought process associated with the event.
7. Find a tree
Remember the movie, ‘Avatar,’ where a large tree is treated as the lifeline by the Na’vis? Well, even if you don’t, you would most certainly relate to and agree with a tree’s larger-than-life role in our human lives. And what better way to reconnect with trees than to include them in your wedding plans? If you are organising your wedding at your residence or somewhere in the neighbourhood, or you have plans to book a hotel, resort, farmhouse, or a gorgeous banquet hall, just make sure that they have a full-grown tree somewhere on the lawn. Decorate the tree trunk with garlands and the branches with colourful flowers and beautiful hanging lights. Make seating arrangements for guests around the tree and set up the ceremonial stage close to it. This would not only help you connect better with Mother Nature, but would also bring very positive vibrations to your married life. And the soothing effect of the trees would certainly create long-lasting memories of your wedding in the minds of your guests. There are many banquet halls in Delhi for wedding ceremony where there are beautiful large trees in the middle of the lawns.
8. Arrange a soulful soiree
Music is the essence of human life. There is hardly anyone in this world who doesn’t like music in any of its various forms. And your wedding is the biggest opportunity to spread happy vibes through some cheerful notes and passionate tunes. Treat your relatives and guests to some soulful music on your wedding night by organising a Ghazal mehfil or a Sufi fiesta. You can also invite a Shayari artist to entertain your guests. Forget about DJ and leg-shaking Western beats, soulful Indian music and Shayari would, no doubt, make your wedding night memorable for your guests and relatives.
9. Design a customised menu with unique food names
The good old Chicken Tikka and Paneer Butter Masala sound boring. Give these all-time favourite dishes some unique and interesting names that have something to do with your wedding. Say, for example, a “Neetu Naan” or a “Harjeet Halwa,” or maybe a “shaadiwali laddu” or a “Manjeetey Mutton di Handi.” Name them anything you want in any way you like. The idea is to bring smiles to the faces of your guests and make your wedding menu card stay in their minds for a long time. You can also write down the quirky names you’ve given to all the items in your wedding menu on a large wooden-framed blackboard and place it near the entrance of the dining hall. This would make your wedding guests indulge in jovial and fun-filled discussions between themselves about your menu while they wait outside the dining hall. And don’t worry about the venues as there are numerous small wedding ceremony venues in Delhi that allow customized menus and even outside catering for weddings.
10. Feed the poor
Arranging a grand wedding feast for guests and relatives is what everybody does at his wedding. There is nothing new in it. Make your wedding stand out and let it remain in your guests’ minds forever by arranging a feast for the poor and starving on your wedding night. Talk to an NGO or a local authority and gather as many people as you can feed within your budget. You can also invite children from an orphanage. Feed as many of them as you can with your own hands after the wedding rituals are over. This would not only make your wedding memorable for your guests but also earn you the blessings of the common men.
Conclusion
When it comes to making your wedding ceremony unique and memorable, there is no dearth of ideas. Some of these ideas fit in an Indian context while some of them don’t. This article talks about 10 such wedding ceremony ideas that are distinctive, quirky, and may even sound absurd, but they fit rightly into the Indian context. Most of these ideas are not available on the internet, and you might find some of them to be completely out-of-the-box, but they can make your wedding memorable nonetheless.
How to choose the best venues for a wedding ceremony?
Choosing the wedding venue that matches your dreams and budget is the most important part of wedding planning. But most people struggle to find the right venue at the right time and often end up messing up with the most important events of their lives – their weddings. Thankfully, there is Sloshout that can help you in this regard. For those of you who don’t know, Sloshout is India’s number one online venue-booking platform that allows users to search hundreds of venues in their local areas from a massive online database and lets them choose the venues they like and book them online from the comfort of their homes or offices. To avail of Sloshout’s world-class venue-booking services, you have to log on to the official website www.sloshout.com and make customised venue searches based on your requirements.
FAQ
What are the 5 most important things you need for a fantastic wedding ceremony?
The 5 most important things you need for a wedding ceremony are,
- A stunning wedding venue that fits the budget
- Lovely theme-based décor that matches your dreams
- A stunning wedding dress and ensembles to match the theme
- Delectable food and lip-smacking beverages
- Great Music
What are the 7 steps of a Hindu wedding?
The seven steps of a Hindu wedding ceremony are known as the Saptapadis or the saat phere. The bride and groom take each of these saat pheres to make an important promise to each other with the sacred fire or agni as a witness that is kept at the centre. The promises associated with the seven steps are,
- Fulfilment of duties and responsibilities to each other, children and the community
- Collective progress toward spirituality
- Getting rich in terms of both wealth and morality
- Commitment to love, trust and respect each other
- Promise to procreate morally strong and heroic children for the betterment of society
- Pray to the almighty for each other’s long life
- Remaining true to the vows and staying faithful to each other for life
What are the types of Hindu weddings?
As per the traditional Hindu scripture Manusmriti and several others, there are 8 types of Hindu marriages which are – Brahma, Daiva, Arsa, Prajapatya, Asura, Gandharva, Raksasa and Paisacha.
