The Tree Was Already There

Some venues have to be dressed. This one asks to be left alone. We handled this wedding from the first conversation to the last guest, and we set the ceremony beneath the rain tree at Taj West End, Bengaluru.

A tree older than the hotel

Taj West End began in 1887, when a British woman, Mrs. Bronson, opened a boarding house with ten beds, according to The Hindu. The rain tree is older still. Writing in 2012, The Hindu said it stood on the grounds before the hotel existed and put its age at 164 years. The hotel itself calls it Bengaluru’s second-oldest known rain tree.

The rain tree is not native to India. It comes from Central and South America and has been planted widely across South Asia as a shade tree. Its name is explained in several ways, one being the steady drizzle of sugary discharge that cicadas feeding on its leaves let fall from the canopy.

What the garden did

The branch does the work a ceiling would. It reaches out over the chairs, and the light that comes through it is green and soft. What we added is small: white flowers along the aisle, a pale arch at the far end, and chairs in rows that bend toward it.

Jasmine garlands strung from a high branch of the rain tree. Photo: The Taaffeite Lens, Taaffeite Events.

A tree that old does not need decoration. It needs room.

The grounds carry more history: twenty acres of gardens, the 1887 block, and the 1905 block.

Planning in a place with this much history is mostly knowing what to leave out. Everything we set out could be picked up again. The tree could not, which is the point of choosing it.

Sources: Taj Hotels, Taj West End, Bengaluru; The Hindu, “A walk that takes you through 125 years of history”, 9 August 2012; Wikipedia, “Samanea saman.”