Wedding in Madurai 11/2019

 

  

 

We went to Madurai, a city in South India in a state called Tamil Nadu, for a friend's wedding. My friend Swati had come to Delhi to look for wedding outfits and we met up. She invited us to her wedding since it was going to be a big extravaganza, and we decided that we would go!

Madurai is called "The City of Temples" and said to have more temples than homes. We went to the famous and ancient temple called the Meenakshi Temple that is from the 1200s! It was stunning and huge and simply unbelievable that it was that old.

We ate everything on a banana leaf the entire time we were there, and we were never given utensils. This is typical in the South and with some foods in the North, but it was new to us to not have a type of bread to scoop things like rice with sambar or chutney. Jake's hands got prune-y from just eating his meals a few times!

The wedding was stunning and bursting with tradition. We missed it, but there was an elephant in the morning and the bride Swati was carried in by her brothers and male family members. She had at least 4 outfit changes on the day of the wedding, stood for pictures for hours, had live musicians, real jasmine to put in our hair, and partook in every wedding ceremony and ritual of this region. There was a jumbo-tron that projected the wedding so that we could see all the details as there is often family crowded around the bride and groom during the ceremonies, making it hard to see. It was truly a work of art.

On our way out, the wedding festivities concluded with a coconut smashing ceremony where we threw coconuts into a pit (either 101 or 301, we can't remember) for good luck to the bride and groom and their families!