The Wedding!

When we returned from Secunderabad, we immediately split off to get ready for the wedding.
Rohit’s elegant, vivacious, and glamorous sister Jaya was kind enough to tie my sari for me, despite her already having a million things to do!

I don’t have a photo of myself – but maybe I’ll show up in a photo elsewhere and I’ll post it. I LOVED my sari. I am thinking of buying a few more and wearing them to special events here in the states. In my opinion – the right sari can give a woman the perfect blend of elegance, glamour, and a tasteful dose of sexiness thrown in that comes out in surprising glimpses! I saw this throughout the night in a parade of amazing saris that women wore to the wedding.

So once we are all decked out, we got onto the wedding bus and headed for the temple for a blessing before the wedding. The temple was very pretty and a group of women were chanting upon our arrival and a priest performed the ceremony.

Here is Rohit giving me the eye for taking his photo:

Here is a photo of Rohit’s niece Kittu behind on of the flame the priest was passing through the wedding party.
I was unsure about taking photos at the temple. Other people were doing it -- so I took a few discreet non-flash photos...excuses, excuses. I apologize for any bad form on my part – and because of this, I won’t post any other photos I took there.

Once the ceremony at the temple was complete we started the bharat to the wedding gardens. The bharat is the wedding procession that escorts the groom to the wedding. It was madness!

A bharat band and light bearers met us and we started down a path to the wedding gardens. The band consisted of a troop of energetic drummers and a keyboardist on what I think was a tuk-tuk. Rohit was in a car following up the entire bharat – probably getting very antsy because we kept stopping to dance and shoot off fireworks!

Here is a very short video I took of the bharat - just to provide an idea of what it was like in action!

Here are a few photos of the bharat – sorry I got mostly the backs of people because I was in the back, occassionaly being pulled up front to do my best Aishwarya Rai dance impressions! Thank goodness I watched Namaste America religiously for a while!

Here we are arriving at the gate to the wedding gardens!
Some people may consider this ironic. Some people may consider this typically J-Ha. But, I got so excited taking flash photos of the wild bharat, that by the time we got to the wedding ceremony, my camera battery had nearly run out! It is a relatively new camera to me and I had only take non-flash photos, for which the battery seemed to last forever. Here are the photos I managed to snap before my camera went bye-bye.

Rohit and Srividya approach the wedding mandap:
Srividya’s sister, holding Aditi, and aunt follow Srividya to the mandap. Aditi, 9-months old, was Srividya's maid of honor!And finally - the regal husband and wife to be:

Congratulations to Rohit and Srividya and their families on this moving and auspicious occasion!