TALK about bridezilla moments!
Gone are the days when we received wedding invitations and chose our best dresses as guests should. Nowadays, the whole wedding is so scripted by planners and the host families, that the guests have to do as much nerve-wracking shopping as the bride and groom.
A recent news item about India’s most talked-about wedding, that of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, says that guests invited to the pre-wedding celebrations in the oil-and-gas township of Jamnagar (which is the Ambani RelianceTown for all intents and purposes) received a nine-page event guide and wardrobe planner for the three-day ceremonies and games.
Of course, the Ambani wedding is on a sort of global scale that defies imagination: the whole township of Jamnagar has been co-opted as the venue, the three-day programme ranges from cocktails to jungle safaris and a final elegant evening reception. Guests are being ferried on chartered flights and each guest – yes, you heard that right – will be assigned a make-up artist, saree draper and hairstylist.
Of course, these are the side-effects of a global guest-list – you cannot expect Mark Z’s wife from Meta to know how to choose a lehenga or wear a saree. But equally, it’s about setting the bar so that the wedding is, at all times, Instagram-worthy and not a guest is left behind, under-dressed. Perhaps the only thing that one can afford to gloss over is the end-page disclaimer that while all these suggestions and colour codes are prescribed, guests are free to wear whatever they are comfortable in and enjoy the moment. Really? Would any guest dare to stray from the plan, unless s/he was an acknowledged eccentric genius like the late barefoot MF Husain?
But these are not just the woes of high-flying wedding guests. A friend in Bahrain was bemoaning the fact that he was expected to buy a white tuxedo for his niece’s wedding in Dubai.
“I’m never going to wear it again, I know, and I have no choice like swapping for a white sherwani, a formal Indian dress,” he said.
At the other end of the scale, you have movie star Aamir Khan’s daughter Ira’s recent wedding where the groom, her personal trainer, jogged up to the altar in track pants and sneakers and the Hindu ceremony began with some yoga asana – presumably in yoga gear. The couple crowned the wedding with a hugely glam reception, glittering with celebs, designer wear and diamonds. My question is, if they could dress up for a reception, why not for the actual ceremony? After all, a wedding ritual is about invoking the blessings of God or, if it is a civil signing, invoking the might of the law to bear witness to your love for each other. Surely that deserves a proper dress code?
But let’s go back to less orchestrated times and leave the guests to dress in their own best finery. The dictatorial moves of millennial designer weddings rob the occasion of its sacred aspect and replace it with a net of improbable do’s and don’t’s that tie up guests into knots.
Are Bahrain brides and grooms, who are planning their nuptials in this Wedding Destination of the 2020s, listening?