The Wedding Diaries (2) - Engagement
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Hello!
This week's blog post is going to be the second instalment of The Wedding Diaries and will be taking you through our engagement!
THE ENGAGEMENT (also known as the chunni & kurmai ceremony)
The engagement was made up of two ceremonies; the chunni and the kurmai.
The two ceremonies go hand-in-hand together. The kurmai the focuses on the boy and is done by the girl's family. The chunni focuses on the girl and is done by the boy's family.
Both ceremonies are essentially centred around giving blessings to the couple to be married.
The kurmai can take place before the wedding by any length of time, a week, a year or even just moments before. The choice to do it before the wedding and make it into a separate event is entirely down to individual choice. Some families like to have an event between the announcement and the wedding, especially if there is a substantial amount of time in between the two.
The kurmai generally takes place at the 'gurdwara' (Sikh temple). The girl's family bring sweets and dried fruit and maybe a 'kara' (Sikh religious bangle) or a ring or a watch to present to the boy. The meaning of this ceremony is essentially both families declaring their approval of the union, and this is usually shown when a senior male member of the girl's family feeds the boy a date.
Next comes the chunni. This involves the boy's family gifting the girl with presents such as make-up, jewellery, Indian clothes etc. They also bring 'sindoor' (a red powder) and most importantly, a red 'chunni' (scarf). The sindoor is placed in the girl's parting by the boy and the chunni is placed on the girl's head by the boy's mother. This signifies the boy's family welcoming the girl to the family.
Coming back to our kurmai/chunni, initially, I had wanted to do ours within the wedding week. It can take a great deal of time and money to plan these as separate events and often takes focus from the actual wedding, which we learnt from my sister's wedding. However, in this instance, we did what our parents wanted and ours took place on Saturday 7th October.
Ricky had his kurmai ceremony at the gurdwara in the morning, which I didn't attend as is the custom. From what I hear and the pictures that I saw, it all went well! My family took 5 baskets filled with Indian sweets, fruit and 1 was full of biscuits because they're Ricky's favourite.
Then in the afternoon we had the chunni ceremony. Now, I have attended a few chunni ceremonies, including my sister's as I have mentioned above and I've seen them get bigger and bigger over the years until they resemble what can only be described as a mini-wedding, with cake-cuttings and first dances. I knew that I didn't want any of that, doing it once on the actual wedding day would be enough for me!
As a result, we opted for an afternoon tea theme. There was no Indian food in sight (a bit of a risk) but we actually had a lot of people tell us it was a welcome change to the norm! It took place at the Malmaison hotel in Birmingham in a conference room. There was no cake, no DJ, no dancefloor, nothing that gave even the slightest hint of a wedding reception!
My family welcomed Ricky's family to the venue, and once everybody was settled, I entered wearing an Indian outfit gifted to me by Ricky's family.
The chunni ceremony then took place, Ricky put the sindoor in my parting (and might have accidentally spilt some on my forehead!) and Ricky's mum placed the red chunni on my head. Everybody then gave us their blessings and we ate. It was a really fun, chilled vibe and I was really happy with how it went, regardless of the nerves I was feeling beforehand!
But as I mentioned above, it did take up quite a bit of time planning and co-ordinating it all. As a result we lost a bit of momentum with the main wedding planning, which is now just over 3 months away!!! I can't quite believe where the time is going. I also have my hen coming up in the next couple of months which I'm excited to share with you all in the next instalment of the Wedding Diaries!
But if you want to see what we get up to in real time, make sure you stay tuned to my Instagram @thestylecount !
Thank-you for reading x
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