Indian weddings define the grandeur in our culture. These weddings serve as a way to reflect your “place” in the society. Don’t get me wrong, weddings are happy events and special days. They are quite literally the beginning of a relationship. However, it’s also true that weddings do not define how a marriage would be. This is one of the more logical reasoning that we hardly associate with our way of living. No, we like it big. We like weddings that are straight out of movies. We like it when everybody notices the big, fat party that we throw – and we love the validation. Of course, the over-the-top exhibition was not always as we see it today. There is evolution involved.
Indian weddings, now an industry in their own right, owe much of this grandeur to Bollywood. Films like Sooraj Barjatya’s Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge introduced larger-than-life celebrations with rituals and elaborate festivities. These movies set a new standard for weddings, blending tradition with modernity. An example is how sangeet became a wedding event with both the bride and groom’s side of the family. And then there were songs like Joote De Do Paise Le Lo, which gave us traditions that brought their hint of ‘new culture’.
Evolution does not happen over night. It starts from one point and gradually becomes into a thing that we end up accepting socially. So generations changed and movies continued to redefine weddings with narratives that resonated with people. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani with Dharma’s touch of romanticization, introduced concepts like destination weddings and weddings away from home, which only added to the event. What used to be ceremony to perform simple rituals, turned into events spanning over days.
The modernization of weddings, however, was not something that remained practical. Even with pragmatic ideas like hiring wedding planners from films like Band Baaja Baaraat, came with a certain pressure to adhere to a certain status. As if not following all these templates that Bollywood set would mean an incomplete wedding.
The addition of social media increased the spectacle of Indian weddings, transforming them into overtly planned events that look like movie sets. Wedding hashtags, professional planners, cinematic photography, and lavish venues have become integral to making it all ‘special’. So when special is something very subjective to two people, now it refers to everything that Bollywood comes up with. It’s like ticking a list that we someone else has set for us.
There is a bigger issue to this largely influenced set-up, though. When we see something that we wish to adopt in life, we forget that there are logistics involved. Logistics as basic as finances. It’s not something that films have to worry about – solely because they replicate life and are not life itself. The Indian wedding scene already relies on proving a point to the society – that we have it all. Add to it the pressure of making it look good, and there is not a lot of balance left. For humble families, managing a wedding also means managing money. This money is usually saved through years, and spent on one big day.
While it’s a personal choice to do all of it, the bigger, more important question is why we do it? And if following Bollywood and judging life by its standards really the right way to live?