The Wedding Diaries (1) - Announcement
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Hi everyone!
Hope you are well.
Today's blog post is going to be a bit different/special. From my Instagram posts (@thestylecount) some of you may have picked up on the fact that I am ENGAGED and currently planning a wedding! After some consideration, I have decided that I want to share this journey with you all, and this will be THE WEDDING DIARIES.
I want The Wedding Diaries to explain how everything works, what it all means and how it all gets planned. And of course, the end result!
So first, I will begin with a bit of context.
I am planning an Indian Sikh wedding and these often tend to be on a large scale with events before AND after the big day. However, nothing is set in stone! You can have as many or as few events as you wish. It's usually comes down to personal preference/family traditions/budget.
My fiance Ricky and I have had three events so far across two days that were nine months apart, and then we have the big day which is made up of the religious ceremony and the reception. We have decided to split this across two days as it can often be a long and tiring day and we wanted to enjoy everything as much as possible and reduce some of the time pressure.
This blog post is all about the first event in our journey and that was the ANNOUNCEMENT (which actually came before the proposal - weird I know, but proposals aren't really an Indian tradition so the order in which these initial events happen varies from couple to couple).
THE ANNOUNCEMENT (also known as the ROKHA/ROKA/TAKA CEREMONY)
The meaning behind this ceremony is that the boy and girl's immediate family announce that the couple intend to marry, and are formally committed to each other. Making such an announcement to extended family is a pretty big deal! It usually takes place at the bride's home and traditionally involves the bride's male relatives (father, brothers, uncles etc) visiting the groom's house and gifting him with a gold chain along with sweets and dried fruit. This symbolises that the boy has been 'chained up' to the girl and her family, and that they will be together from thereon in. Once this is done, the boy and his family visit the girl and her family at her house so the couple can be blessed together with a prayer. (Traditionally a girl cannot visit the boy's house before the wedding as it is thought to be bad luck!)
For us, this event took place 2-3 months after Ricky and I decided we wanted to marry each other and our parents had met each other. The families had to be sure that everyone was happy before we could proceed.
Ours was hosted in a small banqueting suite near our house with about 50 family members to take some of the hosting pressures of our parents.
Ricky and I sat next to each other and a priest performed a prayer (Ardas). We were then fed sweets before everybody ate lunch together. It was a really relaxed occasion for the two extended families to meet each other and begin forming relationships...although I was super nervous beforehand!!!!
I decided to wear a traditional outfit that wasn't too heavy or over the top. I wanted to go for this look as this was only the first stage of the wedding and I knew I'd have lots more opportunities to get really dressed up. I wanted a build up to the big day in terms of my outfits too!
The next steps were to fix a date for the wedding and we also decided that we wanted to have an official engagement before the big day (some people choose to do this in the week of the wedding - again it's a personal choice). This was held on Saturday 7th October and it was split into two events in one day. This will be coming VERY SOON on the blog :)
Well that's it! I hope you enjoyed this post, please let me know if you did. If you have any questions at all about anything I've written about, please do ask! xxx
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