Face masks make mark as wedding fashion

Vadodara: In big fat Indian weddings, guests shower bride and groom with flowers when they take the seven sacred ‘pheras’. But on Thursday at a wedding in Vadodara, guests were not given flowers. Instead, they and family members of the bride and groom were given face masks.

Nidhi Sonune and Shashank Jadhav took their wedding vows outside the former’s house on Waghodiya Road. As guests started pouring in, wedding organizers asked everyone to clean their hands with sanitizers and wear face mask to protect themselves in the wake of coronavirus pandemic.

“There were about 300 guests who had come to attend the wedding from Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and our native place. So, we had decided to give face mask to everyone for protection,” said Nidhi’s uncle Shyam Sonune. He added that the family did not want to change the wedding date as they had already postponed the wedding once in the past. Earlier Nidhi’s sister, who lives in the USA, had some visa issues so the wedding date was changed to March 19.

“It is true that the government has closed down multiplexes and other places where gathering of people takes place in large numbers. But the wedding was organized right outside our house and we had taken all the preventive measures,” Shyam added.

During the wedding ceremonies, all guests, including children and the priest who chanted the mantras, obediently wore the masks. Nidhi and Shashank too, without worrying how their wedding photographs will turn out to be, did not remove the masks till the end.