Why there is no vidai planned for my wedding
S2E07–4 days to #chhabhi
Hello Beautiful People :)
Today I will share a subject very close (or shall I say 'distant’) to my heart.
Vidaai.
You all know that very well by now that there will be absolutely no “vidaai” or anything even remotely symbolizing the “giving away” of the bride at my wedding. And, though the reason you would have definitely guessed by now, I still wanted to share some of my thoughts around why is that…
Why Today?
With hardly 4 days remaining for my wedding, I realised today, how ‘stress-free’ I am as compared to what I would have been if I had gone with the conventional drama /symbolism of a Hindu wedding — the wedding day being the day when the girl becomes ‘paraayi’ for her parents; when she is given away to a new family; when the priority order of her responsibilities change overnight; when coming back home is never the same again…
Since my childhood, I have been terrified of experiencing vidaai’s at weddings. I used to (and still do) cry the moment it is time for the wrap-up after the phere’s. I even used to have nightmares (not kidding) as a child, after attending family weddings, frightened to the core.
Perhaps, one of the earliest reason for me to decide never to get married was the concept of ‘vidaai’.
Questions…
Even though most children leave their parents’ home in their late teenage (for higher education or exploration) or early twenties (for a job or business or something), why should then such a psychologically troubling and emotionally tumultous moment be artificially created in their lives, to symbolize their ownership transfer?
Why can’t there be a choice?
Why can’t the wedding simply be a ‘union’ of two families?
Why should the groom’s parents be always on a higher pedestal? Why can’t both set of parents be of equal stature for the groom and bride respectively?
Why is the time a wife spends with her spouse’s parents almost always disproportionately greater than that spent by the man with her wife’s parents?
Even if both the bride and groom have already been staying away from their parents’ home, why only the woman is ‘renounced’ by her parents on her wedding, when practically nothing much changes after all?
All these questions used to haunt me (they still do)…and honestly, with my earlier social circle, I had never thought I’d find a guy who’d resonate with all this; whom I’d like to marry (not that marriage is really a necessity), who’d fight with his parents for a truly ‘equal’ wedding, where the ladkiwale are not inherently apologetic for even taking extra breaths during the wedding.
My Answers…
And now that I have found Abhishek, things are so different! I never thought I’d be so relaxed and emotionally stable days before my wedding. In fact, if anything, I am super excited for the new chapter (that’s how it should be, right?)
What were some of our toughest negotiations with our parents?
- There will be no hindu rituals in the wedding — no pandit, no jaimaala, no phere, no kanyadaan, no vidaai etc. We will be getting married under the Special Marriage Act instead of the Hindu Marriage Act which mandates these riti-riwaaz.
- There will be no elaborate lena-dena, and especially no gold-jewelley gifts for me or anyone else related to the wedding
- The expenses will be almost equally shared by both the families
- That I will NOT come to his home immediately after the wedding; that we both will stay at a neutral place for a few days, visit a naturopathy center for a week or two, enjoy a staycation somewhere a month or two and only then come back to spend time with our parents — that too equal amounts of time in both homes —of course, together.
There were several other smaller ones, but these are the major ones that really took some effort from both of us.
And, we are really very grateful to both our parents, and all the relatives, for understanding our view-points, and accepting this ‘new’ way of doing things despite its being completely opposite to what they have always seen or believed in.
I understand that it is not so easy to challenge one’s core beliefs, and thus it is absolutely laudable what our families agreed to for our happiness.
Thank You ❤
Love,
Chhavi
