Fusion weddings tend to go wrong in one way: one culture becomes the other’s decor. We hold that as a belief, not a finding. For a Bengali bride and a Malayali groom, our answer was arithmetic. Whatever we put in the room from one side, we put something from the other beside it.
Our mood board listed five things from each. From Kerala: chairs dressed in kasavu, the ivory cloth with a gold border; banana plants; an umbrella at the entrance; tea glasses full of petals; jasmine. From Bengal: brass bells; plates printed with red handprints in alta, the dye applied to hands and feet at weddings; the topor, a Bengali wedding headpiece; a sindoor box; cushions in the same red. Even the dye is shared. South India calls it parani.
The Kerala half of the board: kasavu on the chairs, banana plants, an umbrella at the entrance, tea glasses of petals, jasmine. Board by Taaffeite Events.
The Bengal half: brass bells, a plate of alta handprints, the topor, a sindoor container, cushions in alta red. Board by Taaffeite Events.
The mandap was the old kind: a wooden frame on posts under a lattice roof, open to the garden at The Secret Grove in Bengaluru. The ceremony beneath it included the Bengali ritual of seven circles around the groom.
The board had opened with six colours and two words: sur in Bengali and swaram in Malayalam. Both mean a musical note, and both come from one Sanskrit word. A fourteenth-century Kerala text on blending Sanskrit with Malayalam said the two should join “like ruby and coral, without the least trace of any discord.” We were after the same note.
Whatever we put in from one side, we put something from the other beside it.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Manipravalam,” “Lilatilakam,” “Alta (dye),” “Kasavu” and “Wedding mandapa”; Wiktionary, “സ്വരം”; Shobdik Bangla dictionary, “সুর.”
Related: The Ceremony Left a Note, from the same wedding; The Tree Was Already There, another ceremony built around what the place already had.
- fusion wedding
- bengali malayali wedding
- mandap decor
- bengaluru
