My Wedding: How, Why, Photos!

New: As pointed out by a few friends, along with many good things (detailed below), simple marriages entail a couple of problems: A) Loss of jobs for the poor, if the money saved by avoiding a grand wedding stays locked up in the bank B) It may get spent on environmentally unfriendly things like big, power-hungry appliances and fuel-guzzling outings. However, if simplicity is combined with charity [i.e., the money saved is used for social work], low-cost weddings are undoubtedly the way to go, for the overall good. About whatever you can’t donate, it’s best to spend it in ways which route the highest % of your money to the poor – shopping from local vendors/NGOs (not malls), hiring an adequately paid cook/maid, etc. – hurting the climate the least [More/Specifics].

NB: Recent updates highlighted in red.

Characters Involved:

• Sejal: She currently works with Wipro Bangalore [telecom sector]. A native of Ahmedabad, she has done BE EC from DDIT, Nadiad (Gujarat). More on her blog and Orkut page.

  

• Pulkit (This intro is meant for the first-timers on this blog): He currently works with HP Labs Bangalore [R&D in image processing]. A native of Ahmedabad, he has done MS by Research from IIIT, Hydearabad and BE IT from Nirma Institute, Ahmedabad. More on his Orkut page and here.

Marriage Theme We Followed:

Divert the marriage money to community development. In plain words, keep the wedding simple and support NGOs/social work from the money saved [Yes, this has to be over and above your other/regular donations] [More].

Theme B – Match your wedding expense with donations:

If you are unable to keep the marriage low-key, make a donation matching (a percentage of) the wedding expense. It’s also crucial to transact with small players [bandwalas for DJs, local cloth/jewelery shops over branded showrooms, modest restaurants/caterers] for suppressing inequality.

Wedding Venue: Arya Samaj (Mandir), Ahmedabad. None of us expected such a spacious place for 2200 bucks ['pundit'/ritual material included]! Our first choice, though, was the Marriage Registrar’s office.

Spectators: Immediate relatives (around 20 from either side)

Events: Just the marriage ceremony with rituals, followed by lunch in a nearby restaurant [No reception, music night, etc.]

Exchange: After a number of requests/arguments, we managed to ensure minimal give-and-take of gold and gifts, but couldn’t avoid the exchange totally.

Why Simple Marriage?: Nah, there was no ulterior motive of saving up money for a grand honeymoon in Switzerland or something like that :).

• We believe that the galactic sums of money spent on flashy marriages should be diverted to better causes. This prompted us to celebrate our wedding through donations to needy NGOs. It is true that conventional marriages help in money rotation, benefiting some of the poor. But, typically, only a part of what you spend for the wedding descends to the poor. Contrastingly, when you donate to a genuine NGO, most of your money reaches the needy. Besides, there exist countless opportunities, other than the wedding, for rotating i.e. spending your money (without harming the environment substantially). [More in the 1st paragraph]

• Expensive marriages have almost become a must, due to the fear of what “people” will think otherwise. Many (especially low-income) families are forced into taking hefty loans to account for the wedding expense. We wanted to emphatically break this unwritten societal norm. No one should be forced in the name of customs/society (for any matter).

• Because the marriage cost mostly falls on the shoulders of the girl parents, costly marriages (along with dowry) cause parents to prefer a son over a daughter (grossly unfair to women) #. While the ideal solution to this is equal sharing of the expense between the girl folks and guy folks, the best short term solution is to keep the marriage cost nominal, so that a major reason for not wanting a girl child goes away *.

• We wanted to avoid the pollution through fire crackers [Over a lakh small kids labour in the hazardous and harmful surrounds of cracker manufacturing units], food wastage [Average marriage-wasted food can feed ten families for a week]. A true environment lover can also question the decorative lighting [Most of today's energy is produced by burning coal in thermal power stations, emitting harmful gases], travels (esp. flights) by the invitees and traffic jams through the barat.

• A guest list boasting 500+ invitees to the wedding is not the only way to foster relationships. We would much rather divide these guests into smaller chunks based on commonness, and invite them to our house for separate get-togethers, enabling much more meaningful interaction.

For Those Who Support this Marriage Theme:

We feel good to have your support. But, this feel-good factor won’t contribute to creating a better society. To make a difference, all of us need to aggressively practice this theme in our lives. This theme of celebrating through donations is generic, applicable to all your special events (b’days, anniversaries, academic successes, first jobs, promotions), not just the marriage. However, this should NOT de-emphasize the practice of donating a part of your salary, every month.

An Implementation Bottleneck:

If you are put off from donations because you can’t catch hold of a reliable NGO, feel free to contact me. Here’s where all we have donated. You could also go through this exhaustive list of ways-to -contribute.

Marriage Intimation Card:

Wondering why a simple marriage needs a wedding card? Well, our card encompasses much more than a wedding announcement. Through it, we convey the rationale behind the low-profile wedding to our acquaintances. It also serves as a way of promoting the theme of simple marriages coupled with contributions to social work, so that more of us adopt similar ways. The e-card option was ruled out since not all people back-home are net-savvy. Instead, we made Gujarati letters.

We got the cards prepared from environment-friendly [hand-made] paper by the kids of Arzoo (an Ahmedabad-based NGO), to support the education and livelihood of those disadvantaged children. We advocate the use of this kind of charity greeting cards, as opposed to the Arches kind [Ideally, we should replace paper-based cards by e-cards, wherever possible].

Why Make the Donations Public?:

However big an amount you donate (and however many hours you put in for social work), a small set of individuals/NGOs can never hit inequity hard enough. To make a real difference, much greater participation is needed, which can only be attained through increased willingness and awareness in all of us towards our roles in creating a fairer society. The most effective way of getting that message across is to share your actions with people, hoping that just like their good deeds inspire you, some of your efforts will spark a thought in them.

Convincing the Parents:

We got them to view this as a special opportunity of contributing to the society. Still, there remained a bit of resistance, as anticipated. But, with time, seeing that our beliefs were unshakable, they softened their stance and have been supportive ever since. Now, they are super happy about this marriage theme. So, the key is to tell yourself that mom-dad’s current unhappiness will soon turn into joyous pride. Don’t be driven by momentary emotions. Show commitment to your noble plans. The buzzword is strong-minded persistence. Our advice: Start (casually) telling parents about your simple marriage plans from today itself.

Unanticipated Recognition:

Mom was distributing the marriage cards in her bank where an employee of Divya Bhaskar, a leading Gujarati daily, caught hold of a copy. Soon, I was called up for more details. A day later, the newspaper published an article centered around the new marriage mantra: Combine simplicity and charity. The literal translation of its title would be “With simplicity, came the barat; the bride-groom will donate one-and-a-half lakh”. There is a slight slip in this, as the amount pledged by us is 1 lakh; my parents want to contribute the additional 50k.

More Photos:

# For many financially ill-equipped parents, the birth of a girl means over two decades of cost cutting (to ensure enough savings for the daughter’s marriage).

* Even those of us, who ourselves do not engage in any gender-based discrimination, should bear this point in mind because this is about setting the right trends in the society [People with less education/privileges are immensely influenced by the actions of people like us].