Friday, December 12, 2008

Wedding - The 'comeback' post

I've off the blogosphere for quite some time now - I just now realized that I haven't blogged after my wedding! I'd wanted to blog a few times but then the lazybone in me got better of me. Let me start off my 'comeback' with my thoughts on my own wedding.

For the first time in my life I was thankful to belong to the caste I come from - every other time, it was disappointing to see financially better off people get ahead in admissions and appointments due to their caste. I'm digressing - the point about Malayali Nair weddings is that they are over in a matter of 15 minutes. Some of my friends from outside Kerala who attended my wedding were surprised to find how short the wedding was.

The only tough thing about the wedding was posing for the photographers. What made things worse for me was the fact that the photographer was a family friend - which meant I couldn't shout at him. My funda was (my folks blame my MBA for thinking like this) that I was the customer in this case (of the photographer) and that he was to do my bidding. Sadly this was not the case and me & my wife were made to smile awkwardly, tilt faces by 20 degrees to the right and what not by these bunch of people wielding those heat generating arc-lights. Many times, it appeared as if I was acting out a movie directed by these photographers - on some occasions, these chaps did order a 're-take'.

Afterwards when I got the video of our wedding I realized that it served two purposes: one, a comedy movie for everyone to laugh at the expense of the lead pair, and two, for some people to use as some sort of a register to find out who all came for the wedding.

One important lesson that I learned was about wedding gifts. It was specifically mentioned in wedding invites from both my side as well as my wife's side to avoid gifts. In spite of that I have ended up with at least 15 sets of cups, three dinner sets, many clocks, etc. I now believe that if at all I have to give a gift, I would give as cash (Gift vouchers are even more painful). Or it must be discussed openly with the recipient and purchased accordingly. I got some very useful household items as gift from close relatives and it worked out well because they got it confirmed from my side that no one else was getting me the same gift.

That's a pretty long post already... Signing off for now.