Every marriage we attend we hear this. So easy to blame it on brides!
At marriages I would attend before, I would be restless too, and get amused when I heard this. Obviously, it is not always the bride's fault! But people find it so easy to pass the buck instantly and say she took time to get ready.
I did not realise the enormity of the whole thing until people delayed the ceremony before my wedding reception, drew me up the wall and did just what they do otherwise. Blamed me for delaying the whole thing. I feel like hitting out at people who say that, even now. The other day, when an aunt mentioned this in passing...the same words practised by everyone else through hundreds of such wedding receptions, I threw a fit. Naturally.
In my case, our families decided to fix the engagement ceremony for....the evening slot before reception. And it caused me a ruckus. I bet any ceremony held before the wedding reception delays the whole thing, frustating guests who wait. That the bride is expected to look beautiful, should be given time to dress herself up, is conveniently forgotten by people around her.
Any make-up session, be it by a beautician, the bride herself, or her relatives, takes a neat one hour to do. But when families plan the affair...they at the most assured the bride that she will have about half an hour between the engagement ceremony and reception - to dress up. Brides usually nod their heads, feeling assure that people around them will surely give them the needed time.
What is left unsaid is that this `half an hour' slot which in itself is unearthly for a wedding make-up session, is presumed rather than alloted. It is subjected to pushes and pulls, confusions galore, and last-minute mishaps like garlands gone missing, the concerned people being busy with other wedding chores that crop up miraculously at the precise hour, and so on.
The engagement ceremony or another variation known in the South as gnanavaasam gets delayed and strangely no one bounces blames on others about it.
With the engagement schedule gone haywire, the bride is somehow expected to wear her saree in lightning speed (like our Gods and Goddesses vanish and appear in different avatars and costumes, in our films). A bit of lipstick and eye-liner should do the magic and she will be expected, to `please not make the guests wait'. Suddenly, the onus of the entire wedding schedule falls on her head and she is expected to play the magician who should not keep the guests hungry, who `should be a good girl' and come out of her chamber in a jiffy.
Hey, it's not like she is given the liberty to `look ordinary'. She still has to look dazzling and not an iota less.
Guests who have walked in early and worried as the ceremonies `other than reception' are still in progress, pray that the bride finishes her make-up quick and comes out. What they would not know, is that if there is no beautician out there to spoil her looks ( I say spoil because that's precisely what most beauticians end up doing to brides -- fix a pancake on the face rather than let the bride's personality shine through), there are 10 people out there to manage her.
My cousins were having their panic attacks and losing cool just then, after a circus of helping me change into two sarees for the engagement ceremony. A cousin's kid had fallen sick and her hopes of giving me a hassle-free make-up session had vanished into thin air. The result: people around me were deciding on my look then, much to my horror, leaving me speechless for those moments, and unmindful of the door closing and getting shut every minute with my mother asking us to hurry up...visitors who wanted to take a peek at the bride's chamber so they could snatch a two-minute conversation hopping in, hoping to help.
By then, me, an advocate of wedding schedules having to be sensitive to guests, me who wished to be the best host to my guests, saw my punctuality-at-wedding dream crash down to a million microscopic bits. I do not remember what expression my face had in that hour, but a friend told me months later, that I was in tears, feeling helpless, with all the delay and commotion. Having been warned by friends and relatives to just `shut my mouth up' for those two days instead of protesting, I was tongue-tied anyways.
I would plead once in a while that the guests were waiting...to no avail. My mother would come and drop in a statement...``just send her as she is'' to my cousins and friends. To my dismay, my fiance had worn his blazer and was seen chatting up guests, long before....how I wish I could do just that, hop into a great salwar kameez, go to the dais and say `Go to hell with the saree for now'! Sigh...as if people around me were so merciful as to wear what I felt comfortable in! I had to be a `good girl' who showed off her traditional clothes you know!
My tummy was churning and I had a faint doubt if I would throw up. As if the financial troubles, pressure, subtle ego-clashes that I had to manage before the big event were not enough...as if people would be there to wipe my tears when I would cry alone in another alien city...
They would continue to blame me through their lives though...for delaying the day's events. They would care absolutely not, if someone else and situations beyond my control did it.
The make-up session was over...thank God...I had died a hundred deaths already. The half-an-hour that was promised to me! By now it was a joke forgotten for long.
And it is not like I had respite for the shorter make-up session the following morning. I squirmed when the priest handed the wedding clothes after a delay again, and said, ``Get ready with these wedding clothes in 10 minutes and come''. I pictured this image of me wanting to deliver a punch on his face. But reality bites...I wouldn't do it!
His words blaring chauvinism would have spoilt my mood for the entire day. Even as my cousin was tense with the disarray my make-up paraphernalia was in, and tried doing whatever she could before the auspicious time or muhurtham passed by, my fiance, done with his bit of the wedding ceremony, was at my door with another cousin, and prodding me to get ready quick.
I had lost my cool by then and asked them both to shut up. My cousin obviously felt bad. It was his birthday that day! My fiance tried calming me down. It wouldn't work. The reception hungama had already made me look like the villain.
I came out of my chamber with that scorn on my face. I got photographed that way too. Then, like an angel sent from heaven for that moment exactly, someone said a few golden words to me. I cannot remember exactly what she said, but in effect it was, ``this is a very special moment for you. You will not get it ever again in your life. Stay calm and forget what just happened. Enjoy the whole thing!''
I was angry, but her words seemed to register in my head instantly. I knew her, but was meeting her for the first time, and at my wedding. She was the wife of Ramanianna, a neighbour at Chromepet where my granny, Ammumma lived. His dad is my mother's mentor. Not even my absolute disagreement with the symbol-madness and` tailor-made for the male species' aspect of the wedding ceremony seemed to bother me then. Let me just go through this...I thought.
And smiled through the rituals. After all, was that not what was essential to two souls getting together, far from the parade of prosperity that led to doom in the name of a wedding!
It still hurts. It hurts like a knife driven into my heart today, when I hear those insensitive words from people who've attended others' weddings. It kills me further when my own people continue to say it through their wedded lives...that I caused the wedding reception delay.
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