My Indian Wedding - Saptapadi

As the name suggests, during Saptapadi (Seven Steps) the bride and groom take seven steps together. These steps symbolize the beginning of their journey through life as partners.

With each step that Anil and I took together, we promised to each other to:

1. Support each other
2. Fill our hearts with strength and courage
3. Prosper and share our worldly goods
4. Fill our hearts with love, peace, happiness, and spiritual values
5. Strive to create a happy, healthy, and strong family together
6. Live a long life in a loving harmony with each other
7. Respect each other, be best friends and eternal partners

Upon the completion of the seven steps Anil and I exchanged garlands, and from that moment onwards we became wife and husband.


The priest set up seven piles of turmeric-stained rice, each of which symbolizes one of the steps:

The last step:

Garland exchange. For reasons that are not fully clear to me, the uncle insisted that Anil should put a garland on me before I would put mine on him. I was later told that the person who puts the garland last will be the one that makes all important decisions in the marriage. Still, we did not listen to the uncle and I put my garland on Anil's neck before he put his on mine. I guess that means that Anil should make all decisions for us... :)

My Indian Wedding - Laaja Homam

As in the previous step, during Laaja Homam (Offering Puffed Rice to Sacred Ceremonial Fire), the priest chanted an ancient hymn of praise to the God of Fire (Agni) while we placed offerings into the fire. However, this time the offering consisted of rice, not honey, and it was done by me, not Anil.

I had to cup my hands and Bartek, who represented my father, was filling them with puffed rice. Then I had to throw the puffed rice into the sacred fire as havis (offering) to Agni. By this offering, we prayed to Agni, the ultimate witness to the marriage, for happiness and prosperity in our life together.


Here Bartek is filling my hands with rice. Every time I put the puffed rice into the fire it would make it explode, so I asked Bartek to give me as little rice as possible. Of course he did not listen to me and gave me even more rice than before!

My Indian Wedding - Pradhaana Homam

In Hinduism, human life is seen to have four great goals called purusharthas:

(1) Dharma - righteous conduct and the fulfillment of civic and religious responsibilities
(2) Artha - accumulation of wealth and prosperity by honest means, as well as pursuit of meaning
(3) Kama - enjoyment in life
(4) Moksha - spiritual liberation, as well as detachment

During Pradhaana Homam (Sacred Ceremonial Fire) part of the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom pray to Agni (God of Fire). To receive Agni's blessings they "feed" the fire by putting offerings of e.g. honey into it. Then the couple walks around the holy fire four times, symbolizing the walk of life. Each round around the fire symbolizes one of the purusharthas.


Anil puts honey into the fire. Notice that I keep my right hand on his lap, which symbolizes that I support his actions and that we put offerings to the fire together:

Neeta ties together Anil's dhoti and my sari:

It is difficult to walk when your clothes are tied together!

As we walked around the fire, Anil also put silver toe rings on my toes:

Toe rings distinguish married from unmarried women:

My Indian Wedding - Mangalya Dharanam

Mangalya Dharanam - Tying of Matrimonial Necklace/Ring Exchange

In Hindu culture the groom and bride do not exchange wedding bands (though these days it might sometimes happen). Instead, the groom gives the bride a mangala sutra, a necklace made of gold that includes two talis (emblems) representing each family. The mangala sutra is the equivalent of the wedding ring and as such it identifies a lady as a married woman.

Usually I do not wear gold, so I was not too enthusiastic about having to wear a gold necklace on my neck for the rest of my life. Luckily, mangla sutras are usually black. Moreover, the one that Anil and his mother picked for me is actually pretty: it is not too big, not too flashy, and has an asymmetric pendant, as I requested.

I've been wearing my mangala sutra continuously for the past year, as Anil said that it would be nice if I would. However, during our recent trip to India his mother told me that I should not wear it everyday as it can break easily and it would be costly to repair it (or worse, I could loose it altogether). So I'm thinking about stopping wearing it on our first wedding anniversary. Strangely, it will not be an easy decision - I think wearing it grew on me during the past year...

During this part of the ceremony we also had an option to exchange wedding rings. Initially we were not sure if we want to have wedding rings at all, but then I thought that if I have to wear the mangla sutra, Anil should also wear something that would remind him about me. Moreover, I thought that it would be nice to get wedding rings from Poland, so I asked my parents to buy them for us. Thanks to that my wedding ring has a double meaning to me: it reminds me both about my husband and my parents.

My parents paid for and bought our wedding bands, but Anil and I picked the design we wanted. I probably looked at thousand designs before I selected a few that I liked the most. Luckily, Anil liked exactly the same ones as I did and together we decided to go with simple two-color wide bands made of white and pink gold.

Even though my parents bought our rings long before our wedding, we decided against having them shipped to the US as we feared they might get lost on the way. So we only got our wedding bands a month later, at the end of our honeymoon. My friend Bartek was visiting Poland and he brought them for us. (Thank you, Bartek!) In real life they looked even better than on the pictures, so we were very happy with our choice.

Oh, I should also mention that during our recent trip to India I learned that my mother in law promised to give her mangla sutra as an offering to gods if Anil gets married. She must have been quite worried if she made this kind of promise :)


The priest conducted several prayers before Anil tied the mangala sutra on my neck:

My managala sutra:

Anil, with help from Neeta, put the mangala sutra on my neck:

My Indian Wedding - Muhurtam

Muhurtham - The Sacred Moment is the most important part of Hindu wedding ceremony. It is when the cloth separating the groom and bride is removed and they see each other for the first-time. (For the first time on that day, hopefully, not in their lives...)

The date and time of Muhurtham is fixed to the seconds by family astrologers. For us it was picked by the priest who performed our wedding ceremony, but it was also confirmed to be auspicious by Anil's mother's astrologer.

But before the cloth is removed, the bride and groom place a paste made of jaggery and cumin seeds on each others heads. Jaggery (unrefined whole cane sugar) symbolizes the sweetness of marriage and cumin seeds symbolize the brief moments of inevitable bitterness. This ceremony should also remind the couple that their relationship is unbreakable and inseparable.

I only learned about the jaggery-cumin paste ritual a day before the wedding. I was not thrilled about it and already then I asked Anil to refrain from smashing the paste on my head. I did not want to spend a whole day walking around with sticky substance in my hair and I also wanted to look decent on my wedding photos. (I'm vain, I know.)

Once the Muhurtham moment came and we were asked to place the paste on each others heads, my dearest husband was kind enough to keep it slightly above my head, as I had asked him to. However, that was not good enough for our uncle and he asked Anil to smash it on my head! I was so terrified by that prospect, that I threatened Anil to divorce him if he would dare to do it... So my love skillfully dropped the jaggery ball, hence ending the subject, the cloth between us got removed, and nobody needed to fill for a divorce :)


You can not see it but in the photos below under the leaves we have a paste made of jaggery and cumin seeds:

Here you can better see that Anil keeps his hand with the paste slightly above my head:

My Indian Wedding - Kanya Daanam

Kanya Daanam (Giving of the Bride) was one of the busiest and most eventful parts of our wedding ceremony. During this part the parents of the bride place hands of their daughter into the hands of the groom and ask him to except their daughter as his equal partner throughout life. This "asking" happens without words. Instead a coconut is placed on top of the bride's and her father's palms, and those palms are placed on top of palms of the groom and his parents. Then the bride’s mother pours holy water from the river Ganga on the coconut and the priest invokes the blessings of the gods.

As neither my parents nor Anil's could attend our wedding ceremony, we asked Anil's brother Gautam and his wife Neeta to substitute for Anil's parents, and my friends Bartek and Manja to substitute for mine. All of them did extremely good job as our parents :)

As you can see, Anil and I were still separated by a curtain. Manja (my mother) pours holy water over the coconut that Bartek (my father), Anil and I keep in our hands:

On this photo you can even see water dripping on the coconut:

My Indian Wedding - Kankana Dhaarana

During step 2 (Kankana Dhaarana) of our wedding ceremony, while we were still separated by a curtain, a sacred thread (a turmeric-stained thread wrapped around a turmeric root) was tied on our wrists. This thread should protect us from evil spirits and also signified that we were prepared to take the vows of marriage.

The threads looked like this:

Here we are getting ready to tie threads around our wrists:

And here are some of our guests watching the ceremony:

My Indian Wedding - Ganesh Pooja

While I was getting ready Anil was already "on the stage" and first prayers were taking place. Typically, Indian wedding ceremonies begin with the worship of Lord Ganesha, the remover of all obstacles and the provider of good luck. Ganesha's presence is invoked to insure the successful completion of the wedding ceremony. Other poojas (pujas/prayers) are also performed to invoke the presence of other forms of God to preside over the wedding ceremony.

This part of the wedding ceremony was point number 1 on our wedding program:
Ganapathy (Ganesh) Pooja = Prayer to Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles


At the very beginning of the ceremony only the groom and the pandit (priest) are present:

Just before the entrance of the bride, the groom is hidden behind a curtain:

Then the bride joins the ceremony:

The groom and the bride are still separated by a curtain, and can not see each other:

My Indian Wedding - Morning of the Wedding

I've never had as much fun at a wedding as I had on my own. It was by far the best wedding I've ever attended. Here is how it started:

On the day of our wedding I woke up at 4:45 am. I showered, put on a sari, and went to Chris Scott's studio to have my make up and hair done. Two hours later, at 8 am, Anil picked me up and together we drove to Livermore. As we were driving there it started raining cats and dogs and I was slightly worried that it would cause us to be late as traffic was moving slower than usual. Both Anil and I were also a bit disappointed that it was raining, but later I was told that rain on the wedding day is a good sign and it predicts long and happy lives together.

We got to the Temple on time and there Anil's uncle helped him to drape a dhoti. In meantime I went to "a bride's room", where soon my bridesmaids and my sister in law joined me. I asked them to help me put safety pins in my sari to ensure that it would not fall off in the middle of the ceremony, but somehow we manged to achieve the opposite effect and I ended up taking the sari off. My sister in law, Neeta, tried to help me drape it again but we had some problems with that (again, wedding saris are very heavy and difficult to handle!)

The wedding ceremony already started and Anil's uncle came asking for me several times before I was finally ready to enter... I am amazed that none of that stressed me a tiniest bit. I am a perfectionist and I hate being late, so you would think I would be freaking out about not being ready for my own wedding. But I wasn't. I felt peaceful. I had promised to myself that no matter what happens on our wedding day I would have a good time and it seems that I managed to keep that promise.

To be honest, I don't like weddings. But I loved ours! It was by far the best wedding I've ever been to and I had a blast from the very first minute to the very last. I couldn't stop smiling when I saw a mandap under which Anil was sitting and loving looks of my friends gathered in the wedding hall.

I think only then I understood why some people get married over and over again despite the unbelievable amount of time and effort it takes to prepare a wedding. What I felt on that day by far surpasses any other feeling I have ever had in my life. I felt love directed towards us by every single of our guests. The intensity of this feeling was just amazing. I will remember it for the rest of my life. Hereby I send my love back to all our friends and family who made our wedding day so special - Thank you so much!!! BTW, I'm thinking about organizing our 10th wedding anniversary in Poland, so please book 9th of May 2020 in your calendars :)

I'm also grateful that my husband wanted to have a Hindu wedding ceremony. Indian weddings are simply and plainly awesome. They are colorful, relaxed and "action"-filled. As you will see in the following posts, during the wedding ceremony we walked around the mandap, we added various items to fire, our clothes got tied together, sometimes we were under the mandap alone, and sometimes some of our friends/family members were joining us there. Our guests were also free to walk around, talk and eat during the ceremony! Oh, also traditional Indian music was played throughout the ceremony. Quite different then your typical Western wedding.

One other interesting thing about a Hindu wedding ceremony is that it is performed in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language that not many Indians speak and/or understand today. That means that Anil understood equally little as I did and our dearest uncle was translating most important events of the ceremony both to us, and our guests. His translation was very entertaining and contributed a lot to everybody's good mood. For example, at certain moment uncle said: "At this moment typically the bride's family would have to provide the dowry to the groom's family, but we will do it a bit different today. The groom will have to give all his credit cards and pin numbers to the bride..." That made everybody, including us, laugh. In general, I felt like laughing all the time and it was quite a challenge to keep a straight face.

Some people asked me if I had to "convert" to Hinduism to be able to get married following that tradition. The answer is no. First, there is no concept of conversion in Hinduism. This way it is more like philosophy than religion. Second, it is very open religion/philosophy and anybody could get married in its tradition (even two people of which none is Indian). So if I can offer you my advice, forget about a Western-style wedding and have a fun Indian one!


Last bridal preparations:

The bride enters!

My Indian Wedding - Evening before the Wedding

A day before our wedding our track, which we needed to transport things to the wedding hall, started misbehaving. The engine would switch off whenever the gas pedal was not pressed down... Of course Anil did not think it was a problem at all, and he was confident that he would be able to drive it. I was confident that I wouldn't - just one of those little differences between men and women :)

In the end everything worked out well and we managed to use the truck to transport everything that needed to be transported to the Livermore Temple. Several of our friends were already there waiting for us to help us with the wedding hall set up.

As I mentioned previously, we hired Prime Party Rentals to set up a mandap and to decorate the chairs, but the set up of the tables had to be done by us. If I remember correctly it took eight of us around two hours to do the job, and we were pretty exhausted by the end of it. I was also a bit frustrated as Prime Party Rentals screwed up several things for us: (1) they set up a mandap in the wrong place; (2) they used wilted flowers to make our garlands; (3) they put a wrong-colored ribbons on the chairs...

I remember wondering what else could possibly go wrong and I remember being not happy about feeling tired and exhausted. But I think almost all brides feel like this a day before their wedding.

Then, to make my day even more interesting, our truck decided to one more time show us who was in charge and it switched itself off (even though Anil was pressing the gas pedal) in the middle of the street, just a kilometer away from our house. Luckily, we managed to sweet-talk it into starting again and we got back home safely. Still, we decided that the car was too capricious to be trusted to deliver us to the wedding hall on time, so for our wedding day we rented a car from citycarshare.

Funny enough, we also had a little problem with our citycarshare car (story to come), which makes me think that our wedding-car-karma must have been pretty bad... It proves my point that we should have hired an elephant for the wedding :)


This is how the wedding hall looked on the night before our wedding:

As you can see at the end of the evening we were pretty tired...

My Indian Wedding - Hindu Wedding Ceremony Program

Since we wanted our guests to be actively involved in the ceremony and understand what was happening, we provided each of them with a printout of the program. The printout looked like this:

In case the text on the photos is not easily readable, here it is again:

The traditional Hindu wedding is a deeply meaningful and symbolic combination of rituals and traditions. The ceremony is about 4000 years old and traditionally it is performed in Sanskrit, which is the language of ancient India and Hinduism.

The Sanskrit word for marriage is vivaha, which literally means "what supports or carries." The Vivaha ceremony is therefore a sacred ceremony meant to create a union that supports and carries a man and woman throughout their married life in the pursuit of righteousness (dharma).

The witnesses to the marriage are the Gods above and the five elements of the nature around: Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Sky. Fire – the great purifier – plays a significant role in all Hindu ceremonies. The basics of the marriage ceremony are augmented and modified differently in each section of Hindu society by additional rituals suiting local conditions and needs. Thus the style and detail can change from wedding to wedding.


Our wedding ceremony will consists of the following parts:

1. Ganapathy (Ganesh) Pooja (Prayer to Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles)

The wedding ceremony begins with the worship of Lord Ganesha, the remover of all obstacles and the provider of good luck. His presence is invoked to insure the successful completion of the wedding ceremony. Other pujas are also performed to invoke the presence of other forms of God to preside over the wedding ceremony.


2. Kankana Dhaarana

A sacred thread is placed around the bride and groom to protect them from evil spirits. This thread is then folded and tied on their wrists to signify that they are prepared to take the vows of marriage.

3. Kanya Daanam (Giving of the Bride)

The parents of the bride place hands of their daughter into the hands of the groom. The bride's parents ask the groom to except their daughter as his equal partner throughout life. A coconut is placed on top of their palms. The bride’s mother pours holy water from the river Ganga on the coconut while the priest invokes the blessings of the gods.


4. Mangalya Dharanam (Tying of Matrimonial Necklace)/Ring Exchange

The groom gives the bride a mangala sutra, a necklace made of gold that includes two talis or emblems representing each family. The mangala sutra identifies a lady as a married woman. The mangala sutra is the equivalent of the wedding rings, which may also be exchanged at this time.


5. Muhurtham (The Sacred Moment)

The bride and groom each place a paste made of cumin seeds and jaggery on each other's head with their right hands. After some prayers the cloth is removed and the bride and groom see each other for the first-time.


6. Paani Grahanam (Holding Hands)

The bride and groom hold hands as a symbol of their union.


7. Pradhaana Homam (Sacred Ceremonial Fire)

The bride and groom offer prayer to Agni (the God of Fire) and then walk around the holy fire four times, symbolizing the walk of life. Human life is seen to have four great goals called purusharthas: Dharma (righteous conduct and the fulfillment of civic and religious responsibilities), Artha (accumulation of wealth and prosperity by honest means), Kama (enjoyment in life) and Moksha (liberation).


8. Laaja Homam (Offering Puffed Rice to Sacred Ceremonial Fire)

The priest chants an ancient hymn of praise to the God of Fire (Agni) while the couple places offerings of rice into the fire. By this offering, the bride and groom pray to Agni, the ultimate witness to the marriage, for happiness and prosperity in their life together.


9. Saptapadi (Seven Steps)

The bride and groom take seven steps together, symbolizing the beginning of their journey through life as partners. These seven steps reflect their guiding principles in life. As they take each step, the bride and groom exchange the following vows:

Together we will:
• Support each other
• Fill our hearts with strength and courage
• Prosper and share our worldly goods
• Fill our hearts with love, peace, happiness, and spiritual values
• Strive to create a happy, healthy, and strong family together
• Live a long life in a loving harmony with each other
• Respect each other, be best friends and eternal partners

Upon the completion of the seven steps and the declaration, the bride and groom are officially considered husband and wife.


10. Aashirvaadam (Showering of Blessings)

The priest gives blessings to the couple. The newly married couple then seeks the blessings of the priest, family and friends. The family and friends bestow their blessings by showering them with flower petals.

My Indian Wedding - Pandit

This is a very difficult post to write as the priest (pandit) that performed our wedding ceremony is a such interesting character that I do not even know where to begin telling you about him.

We did not pick him ourselves, but we relied on our uncle to do it as he knows all pandits in the Bay Area. So we were sure that he would be able to make a much more informed choice than we would. But a few days before our wedding the uncle confessed that he did not pick the most knowledgeable, amicable or reliable pandit, but instead he picked the one who was in the worst financial situation and would benefit from our money the most. [Sigh.] That, of course, was extremely noble of our uncle and we are all in favor of supporting people in need, but…

Everybody wants their wedding day to be as close to perfect as possible, and at the very least wants the wedding ceremony to go smoothly. However, several interactions that we had with our pandit before the wedding made us worried that things might not go as smoothly as we would have hoped for.

For one, the pandit was terribly late (or would fail to show up) to every single appointment that we made with him, and during the brief periods of time that we would manage to get a hold of him, he always seemed to be absent-minded, and maybe even disinterested.

Second, according to the wedding ceremony program that we got from him, "the bride enters" event was supposed to happen AFTER the bride and the groom were already supposed to do something together on the stage... Also he "forgot" to give us a list of 13 items that we should bring with us to the wedding ceremony. I fear that if I had not ask him about that, we would have come totally unprepared and would have to frantically run around on that Sunday morning arranging all the needed items. (And the 13 needed items are not things that one usually has at home. The list included: 1 bag of powdered turmeric, 1 bag of kumkum, 2 logs of firewood, 2 big aluminium trays, 3 coconuts, betel nuts and leaves, 3 pieces of 3 types of fruits, flower petals, 2 garlands, puffed rice, 1lbs ghee, incense, camphor)

I felt so disappointed after the first meeting with the pandit, that immediately afterward I released my frustration by shouting at Anil. It was a very first time in our relationship that I shouted at my poor husband... This experience made us realized how stressful wedding planning was, and we concluded that it would not be surprising if some couples would split up in the process.

At certain moment even our uncle must have became concerned as a week before the wedding he told us that he arranged for a “backup” pandit to be ready to substitute in case our first pandit would fail to show up on time (or at all) for our wedding ceremony…

But even though our pandit initially did not inspire too much confidence, on the day of our wedding he behaved perfectly fine. He showed up in the wedding hall one hour before the wedding, started and ended the ceremony on time, and he was perfectly nice and reliable throughout. So I guess we (I) worried too much unnecessarily, and in future I should have more trust that people can do they job right even though initially might seem incompetent.

My Indian Wedding - Bridal Mehindi

Six weeks before my wedding day I had a trial mehendi (mehindi/henna) done on one of my hands to see how my skin reacts to henna. The trial was done by Rachna from "Henna and Beyond".

I was so impressed with her technique and speed that without any hesitation I asked her to do my wedding henna design as well. Already during the trial session we shortly discussed what I looked for: a simple, elegant, slightly asymmetric pattern that will complement rather than completely cover my skin. Rachna totally got what I wanted and she showed me several pretty patterns from which I picked the one that I liked the most. But the best thing about Rachna was that she did not blindly follow the pattern I picked, but instead she asked me if I would have liked to have it modified in any way. I was very happy about that and I asked her to include a drawing of Ganesh, we she did extremely skillfully (you can see his head on my right palm).

Other designs that you can easily find on my hands include peacocks (for luck), sketches of Anil's and my heads, and many floral/geometric designs. Rachna also hid Anil's name within the pattern as apparently (in some families) there is a custom that a groom needs to find his name on the hands of the bride if he wants to get lucky on the wedding night :)

If you are thinking about having mehindi done, I would definitely recommend Rachna. She is not only a very skillful henna artists, but also a super-nice and knowledgeable person to talk with. And I think that's very important as you are going to be spending many hours with your henna artist...


Henna application (done one and a half day before the wedding ceremony):

Anil's head on my left palm:

Final results:

During the party many of my friends were interested in my henna and they also tried to find Anil's name on my palms: