South Indian Weddings

Traditional Hindu weddings of South India

South Indian Weddings - In India, marriage is not just a union of two people. It is the union of two families. Marriage is the strongest social bond that takes place between a man and a woman. In a South Indian marriage, it is viewed as a life long commitment of husband and wife to each other.

Check out these
beautiful wedding sarees

In South India, marriage also brings in not only union between two people, but between two families, their culture, customs and religious practices. To live in harmony for the entire life, this union of two families should happen perfectly. Thus, Indian weddings are usually colorful, ritual, religious and cultural ceremonies with much fanfare. Today there are wedding planners who take the entire responsibility of conducting the marriages,who have taken it as a profession, to conduct South Indian wedding.

In South India wedding, Hindu marriages differ from each region, with their own cultural customs. Exchange of garlands,tying the mangalasutra and going around the holy fire are some of the customs which are common to all Hindu marriages.

In South India, Christian and Muslim weddings too have their own customs and are celebrated in a grand way. Christian marriages are conducted in their respective churches, by the priest.

Muslim weddings attach great significance to customs. The Maulvi is the religious representative who conducts the actual ceremony.

In South Indian wedding, marriage could be either arranged marriage or love marriage. In arranged marriage, the boy and girl meet each other through a medium which is usually parents or matrimonial agency. In this type of marriages, the parents take the responsibility of matching the bride and groom, based on their customs and practices like horoscope matching, matching based on each other’s profession and finally economical status and their family commitments. In earlier days, the proposals, were brought by a middle man called marriage broker, but today in the modern technology world, many online sites provide a platform for the girl and boy, to choose their life partner. In the modern world, the prospective groom and bride get to talk to each other, meet couple of times or chat through mails understand each other before taking the decision to marry.

In love marriages of a South Indian marriage, the process itself begins only with good understanding between the boy and the girl and only depends on parents’ consent and acceptance. But this does not happen that easily, though trend is changing fast. The disadvantage in this type of South Indian marriage is that the couples are less supported by the parents in their married life as the initial decision and responsibility rested with the couples themselves.

In arranged marriages or accepted love marriages, the weddings once finalized, the rituals and traditions carried in practice differ from one state to the other in South India. The common thing in Hindu marriages are the tying of sacred thread around bride’s neck on the day of marriage symbolically meaning that bride is associated with the groom and bonded in to his family for the entire life.