Here are photos from Shammi's and Nuresha's wedding in Rajshahi (a large town in northern Bangladesh). Shammi is Azfar's cousin. Shammi has been living in New York, but he came back to Bangladesh to get married. It was an arranged marriage--Azfar's sister choose Shammi's bride for him. I had been very skeptical of arranged marriages before coming to Bangladesh, but now my attitude has changed a bit after meeting a number of happily married people whose marriages have been arranged. Anyway, Shammi and Nuresha seem very happy together.So, back to the marriage ceremony...the whole ceremony is quite elaborate, and lasts a total of four days. The first day, the groom's family (except for the groom) all go to the bride's house for a "holud" (turmeric) ceremony. (The bride and groom don't get to see each other during the whole marriage ceremony, until AFTER they've actually said their vows and signed the marriage document. I guess this is to make sure there is no "hanky panky," so to speak, before they are officially married!) Anyway, for the holud ceremony, the bride sits on a platform decorated with flowers (see the top photo), and the groom's family brings her gifts, and feeds her lots of food (see the second photo). Everybody takes a turn hand-feeding her a piece or two of sweets, fruit, and other foods, and then they smear a bit of holud (turmeric) on her forehead and face. The turmeric is supposed to be good for the skin, and make it shiny and pretty for the wedding. So we all went over to Nuresha's house for the holud ceremony, while Shammi waited at home anxiously. We filled him in about how gorgeous she looked, of course, as soon as we got home. Then the next day was Shammi's holud ceremony, so it was Nuresha's family's turn to come to our family's house and bring food and gifts for Shammi, and it was Nuresha's turn to sit at home, anxiously waiting to hear how things went. In the next post, I'll describe the marriage ceremony itself.
1 comment:
Wow, what an interesting account of the wedding! I would have loved being there! The whole arranged marriage thing is very interesting. As you said while we were there, in America we would view it as an opportunity for singing "Yoooooou screwed up my life" to our parents! She is very pretty! It is always so interesting to learn more about what their lives are like - including the self-cooling clay houses and the dung fuel. Of course, our pioneer forefathers also used dried buffalo dung for fuel when they were crossing the prairies. You wonder how anyone first figured out to try it??? And how many sarcastic remarks they put up with??? Love, Mom
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