Weddings.

There’s no escaping them.
Go to a mall, you run into a scary looking mannequin wearing a gaudy lehenga that was worn by some actress at her own wedding.

Try to cross a busy road, the chances of you being run over by a groom on a buckling horse are more than those of you being run over by a truck.

Try to ride a vehicle; well you can’t, because you are stuck in a traffic jam caused by over enthusiastic Baaratis who insist on dancing to badly playing tunes.

Reach home, check your phone for news, and wedding photos will fly at you like Hogwarts letters spewed by the fireplace at Uncle Vernon.

The wedding season is here, and nobody lets you forget that.

It is too much. People getting married doesn’t bother me; the fact that they want everyone and their mother to know about it is what gets on my nerves. Why all the show?

I’ve never understood why people save up money all their lives only to squander it in one go on their offspring’s nuptials. There have been cases of people going bankrupt only because they put all their hard earned money into creating a spectacular wedding! That doesn’t make sense to me.

To each his own, I get it; but I think it has got a lot more to do with societal norms and pressures than with one’s own wishes. Especially in India.

I attend weddings, and I’m aware that how a person spends his money is nobody’s business; but I do wonder about the whole point of it when I see plates and plates full of food discarded carelessly. The indifference with which guests toss their plates away makes me angry, because doesn’t food catering take up the largest chunk of the expenses?

The food at least gets consumed, though.

The flower decorations, on the other hand, cost a bomb and can’t even be eaten unless you have groundhogs on your guest-list!

Celebrity weddings are different, people argue.

Their work is all about being in the spotlight, people want to see every bit of their lives, they have earned every obscene rupee they spend, etcetera etcetera.

Why forty three receptions, though? Can they not invite everyone to one and be done with it already?

I think they are just extravagant affairs about extravagant affairs.

And I’m sure they get back all the money they’ve spent and then some by selling the wedding pictures to multinational magazines. And Instagram, of course.

And then girls throng malls to buy the gaudy lehengas hanging off those scary looking mannequins.

It’s a vicious circle, I tell you.

The scale of your wedding is entirely your choice.
But it wouldn’t hurt to be a little conscious about expenditure by prioritising happiness over showing off. Unless you happiness lies in expensive knick knacks, of course.
I’m so not judging you.

So whether you wear Manish Malhotra couture or Manish Malhotra first copy, whether you call your appetisers “entrées” or “starters”, whether you book a five star hotel or a Mangal Karyalaya, please make sure that the wastage is minimal, explain to the Baaratis that roads are public property, and implore the groom not to antagonise the horse by digging those pointy Kolhapuris into its sides, because horses do not understand zebra crossings and nobody wants their obituary to read, “Slaughtered by amateur equestrian”.

And feed a few squirrels with those roses and tulips while you’re at it.