Wedding Bells Ring - Day 2

See this link for all pics :
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/MyWedding#

The sun shined on this planet on Feb 3, 2008, waking me up for the most beautiful day of my life. Its my wedding day. In India, most of these auspicious events are done at a particular time. Similarly the muhurtha was fixed for my wedding in the morning of Feb 3. I have seen several Tamil weddings wherein there are huge number of fun filled activities before proceeding to make Remya my wife. They include, Kaasi Yathrai, wherein the groom decides that he doesn't want to marry and instead enter sanyasa (penance) and hence starts off the mandapam with very minimal equipments like umbrella, a devotional book, small moottai of rice and slippers. The father-in-law has to intervene during this situation and he would ask me to not go, and instead take the girl's hands and get married. I would then reconsider my decision and then go to the marriage hall. Sounds funny right, and ofcourse it is. I had no intention to leave to Kaasi, and I have no intention to do penance. I was just nodding my head affirmatively even before my father in law started those dialogues of come back :P Then once in, the maternal uncles have to lift the groom and the girl on their shoulders at which the garlands are exchanged. Obviously to encourage more fun, there is a sequence of going back and forth while exchanging these garlands. Since both of us were "not over-weight", the lifting gang were able to life me and remya up and we had full fun of exchanging garlands in the air :P :P

Finally, the moment had come. After hours of manthropadesam wherein the prayers are chattered and the fire originating from the homagundam has already filled the place, the Vaathiyar took the sacred yellow thread aka Mangalasuthram, and gave it to me to tye it on Remya's neck. Again as per our customs, only 1 knot has to be tied from my end while the other 2 would be put on by the nathanar, here Lakshmi. There is a huge rush to see the moment as it is considered the entering of wedlock scene is the most important of the Tamil Wedding, and I tied the thaali on Remya's neck and made her my wife.

All folks started congratulating my parents and Remya's parents for having completed the wedding formalities. We had to wait for 15-20 mts more due to some more vedic rituals after which we got to receive the congratulations from our close friends. Overall, a huge sigh of relief that the event has passed on beautifully to be etched in our memories. Remya thought for a second that Remya's dad was crying when he was holding Remya on his lap before the thaali tying. You tend to get lot emotional in these situations since it is a life-changing moment. Overall, things cooled down and everyone had a fantastic Kalyana Bhojanam.

Eating food with the better half on your side is always fun. You pass on some laddu to her, she passes on some other sweet to you and all the old ladies standing around making fun of, innum koncham kudu (give him more) :P :P It was a sumptuous meal on offer and all the items tasted very good. We then had a "grihapravesham" function wherein we had to go into Remya's house and also pray to the nearest temple (Shiva) for the longeivity of the marriage. We had to eat lot of "milk+banana" during the wedding celebrations as most of these elders distribute it whenever they get a chance ;) I love both, so had no complaints while Remya doesn't like Milk, she had to compromise :P

Around 3 PM, we had the "Nalangu". This is again a festivity that has its traditions and is aimed at bringing a camaraderie to the newly weds so that they can come out of shell. We never were in a shell, had a good laugh and we were close friends already, so this was more of a fun-filled session as far as we were concerned. I have attended several weddings of my friends and relatives that I know what needs to be done. Poor Remya, she has hardly seen these tamil nalangu and moreover with 10 maamies sitting around giving different instructions, she was terribly confused. On one instance, when the papad was supposed to be crushed on top of my head (at a fair distance above the head), she ended up crashlanding the papad directly on my head. What a scene it was....everyone was laughing, i was laughing my heart out, some maamies started no no apadi ille, etc etc....but we had so much fun that whenever we see that moment in the video, it just makes us laugh again. Meanwhile, Remya did research post wedding of the "original" style of crashlanding the papad and has showed me the dum dum dum movie's song, where Jyothika does the same thing on Madhavan. :P :P Smart indeed, isnt she....

Then as known, she being a "good girl", sang a beautiful devotional song and Kumar (her cousin) sang a nice carnatic vocal. Me being a "bad boy" sand a film song :P (oru maalai from ghajini) and the moment I praised her how she changed my life within a week or 2, everyone were chorusing around, trying to tease me :P

Reception started around 6 PM in the evening, and I had to quickly change my attire to the "formal" coat/suit arrangement. I have been waiting to flaunt my new italian manzoni coat and the suit was so well on me, I loved it. I have hardly worn that since, but it is of high quality fabric and with Remya decked up as beautiful she can be, it was such a nice pair to be right there, on the stage, enjoying the atmosphere and talking to several friends and relatives who poured into the mandapam.

Day has come to a close, and it is my pleasure to be in wedlock. Remya and myself have found a great connection that we became instant friends, sharing our thoughts and learning from each other. I would want all of you folks to wish us a very happy married life and prosperous life ahead of us :P

The next phase would be the "adventure honeymoon" I had planned in the hills of Himalayas....wait for that post :P :P