I have fond memories of my wedding. It was the usual big fat Indian wedding… a different function every day for the run up to the main event, a few thousand wedding guests, all the bollywood type dance and music, a few hundred ceremonies, all the pampering, shopping and tons and tons of feet touching and gift taking. I had fun! J

The only thing I thought could have been more meaningful was the wedding ceremony itself. I’m not sure if it was do with the undertrained priest that we had, or it is something to do with the ways wedding vows are made in the Marwari weddings. I mean this was the single most important bond I was going to be making in my life and the ancient wedding vows I was making ranged from a promise not to go to the jungle alone to having my to be husband promise me that he will not go dig a well without me!! Jeez…  someone from the apex body of the religion should really look into it upgrading the wedding vows/ceremony!

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I am a fairly religious person. I do believe in god, heaven, hell and all the things in between. I would not want to in anyway want to ridicule religion and I do know that there are mantras to read, gods to be pleased, but would it be too much to update the  vows/the way the ceremony is held so that it can mean something to our generation today?

Take the Christian weddings for example. They have a simple ceremony and hey, personal wedding vows! One to one, special promises to each other, which they share in front of their near and dear ones. I think that is really great. If there was one best practice that the Indian wedding could borrow from other weddings, I would vote this as one!  We already have the engagement and exchange of rings as a wide spread practice in India now, even though it has no roots in the Hindu religion/wedding history, so why can’t we have some upgrade/personalization of the wedding vows too? What say?