Tilak Ceremony - Wedding Part 1

Jaya is married!!!!!!!!! OK, so I'm getting ahead of myself...

This week was Jaya's wedding!!!

We went to M-town to hang out and celebrate with them. South Asian weddings are very different from American weddings. One of the things that makes them different is that they are longer. They can be anywhere between 3 days and 2 weeks (I've even heard of some being longer!!). Everything started with the Sagai (Engagement Ceremony - if you want to read about Jaya's click here!) Jaya & Deepansh were engaged for about 6 months before the wedding.

Here we are dressed up for the first night of the festivities (I look funny, but I loved Aashini's smile so I had to include it) :)

First we went over to Jaya's house. People (mostly family) were at the house. We hung out for a couple of hours with them before the next part. Aashini played with the neighbor kids and had fun :)

This event was different to me because the Bride wasn't supposed to come. Jaya, her mom and some of the family stayed home with her.

We went to the park across the street from Deepansh's (the groom's) house. They had a big tent set up in the park. There was tons of food, places to sit, dance floor, DJ, etc! Here's Adam & Aashini with Mayank & his dad.

Adam got his first opportunity to wear some fun jutes (shoes). He'd always wanted the kind that curled at the toes. This was his first chance to wear them and he was excited :)

This is one of my friends. I love her smile - this pic makes me smile :)

This event was for the bride's family to deliver the dowry gifts to the grooms family. Here are some of the gifts below:

The bride's family arranged the gifts on the stage. Then they had a puja (worship ceremony). Most of this ceremony was between Deepansh (groom) and Mayank (Jaya's brother). A pundit (Hindu priest) led this ceremony.

Here's Aashini watching - she thought it was interesting.

During the puja time, there was a large group of women sitting on the side singing bajhans (religious songs) and some folk songs.

After this time, they had food. There was tons of food and tons of snacks - it was so yummy!!

After the food, they had dancing. Here is Aashini with my friend Nikita - she was teaching Aashini how to dance Indian style :)

Here's Aashini in action on the dance floor :)

This was just the beginning!!! It would be too long to put into one post, so I will write more about it soon (and check my facebook after I'm done wedding posting b/c I'll have even more pics up on there) :)