It is the wedding hopping season in Indore

Are you going through your wedding invites and wondering how to mark attendance at each, then you are not alone as the entire city seems to be struggling with this dilemma.
With just a few auspicious wedding dates this season, the guests are trying to juggle wedding venues and the hosts, the pandits and bandwallahs. 24-year-old software engineer Purva Vijaywargiya, said, “This wedding season will test my loyalty towards my friends as two of them, a colleague and a college friend, are both getting married on December 14.The dilemma of deciding which wedding to attend is giving me a headache as their weddings are in Indore and Dewas and both expect me to travel from one city to the other for their respective events. Missing either of the weddings would mean losing that friend.” And it is not just Purva who is caught in a situation like this.
Difficulty finding pandits and bandwaalahs
Wedding hosts too are in a tight spot thanks to the few auspicious dates as booking pandits and bandwallahs and retaining them has become a problem. Booked for multiple events, they are not willing to wait beyond the scheduled time and are in a hurry to go to the next venue. Veena Sharma, who faced this situation during her son’s recent marriage, said, “Amid the pre-wedding rituals and chaotic relatives it becomes impossible to stick to the timings. The band we booked for the baraat backed out at the last moment complaining that our function was getting delayed and they had two other bookings on the same day to cater to. We literally begged them to stay back and had to even pay double the amount decided. It is natural for things to get delayed during such times but we had to succumb.” It’s the same situation with the pandits as by the time the bride and groom make it to the mandap, the panditji is all set to head to his next wedding booking. Pandits answering calls while chanting wedding mantras has also become a common sight. “It was so funny seeing the panditji take a call in between chanting the holy hymns and saying that he will be at the next venue within an hour. All the guests had a good laugh,” said 19-year-old college student Parul, recounting her cousin’s recent wedding. City based priest Ramjilal, speaking about his extremely busy wedding season schedule, said, “This year the lagans are restricted to certain days only and it has resulted in too many weddings on the same day. It is so tightly packed that I have bookings in two hour time slots and am not able to overstay for even a minute as it gets very chaotic in a wedding venue where the pandit has not reached on time.”
Dividing weddings
The great Indian joint families are coming to the rescue in situations like these where different people in families are attending different weddings on the same day. Homemaker Seema Lakhmani, part of a joint family, said, “Getting multiple wedding invitations is nothing new for us. Thanks to our extended family, we get many invites. This year though the situation is different as the invites are clashing. In order to attend all the weddings, we sit down with the invites and decide on various counts as to who from the family shall be able to attend which function. This way we manage to cover all weddings with the help of different sets of people in the family.
Another homemaker from a city joint family, Komal Singh, spoke to us about her family’s tradition of wedding hopping. “At the start of the wedding season, we make it a point that the most senior members of the family attend the wedding invites of acquaintances and business relations while weddings of first, second and cousins of cousins are attended by the family’s younger lot. Everyone goes for the pre-wedding functions such as ladies sangeet and mehndi and the receptions are attended by any one family member.”
Proper excuses in place to avoid non-attendance embarrassment
While many are planning how they can attend weddings of friends and family members in far off places, there are others deciding credible excuses to give. “I got married last June and have since given my in-laws no chance to complain but this has come at a cost. I had to skip my friend’s wedding this November as it clashed with the wedding of a distant relative. I had strict instructions from my mother-in-law to attend it. As I could not refuse my mother-in-law’s request, I lied to my friend saying that I did not get a leave because of the extended break I took for my wedding. She got extremely upset but I had to lie to save our friendship because had she come to know that I was attending a stranger’s wedding instead of hers she would have never spoken to me,” said, Ritu (name changed on request), associated with a city marketing firm.