If you’re anything like me, much of the Indian population and the South Asian diaspora – which I think encompasses roughly 2 billion people or so, then you would be obsessed with the Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas nuptials taking place at the moment.
You’d think most of us would be exhausted after following the wedding of Bollywood royalty, , whose wedding ceremony was held just a few days ago in Lake Como, but no, we want more. Thankfully Chopra and Jones are there to oblige.
They are currently on day three of their wedding. Yes that’s right, weddings are multi-day events, because we don’t do things by halves in desi weddings.
The wedding ceremonies started on Wednesday with a puja ritual at Priyanka Chopra’s mother’s house and will conclude on Sunday the 2nd of December with an actual “ceremony” - which may confuse some of you who aren’t in the know about what desi weddings are like, because haven’t all the previous days also been ceremonies?
No, well, yes, but those are just precursors to the main event. Consider them like a multitude of entrees before the main course. So there’ll be a Mehndi, a Sangeet, a Cocktail Party, and a Haldi, before the actual Wedding Ceremony which I’m sure will be hella fancy, because one night’s stay at the palace where the wedding is taking place costs a whopping $60k.
If you’re finding it confusing to follow along, imagine what it must be like for Nick Jonas’s family. I have a good idea of how they might be finding it as my in-laws experienced something similar during my wedding to my Scottish husband. They arrived jetlagged and tired into Sydney from Scotland on the day of the Mehendi event and were immediately thrown into festivities that included lots of henna (or mehendi as we call it) being painted on hands and feet, much singing of Pakistani wedding songs while someone loudly played the dhol (drums), and being engulfed in a multitude of garlands of marigold, roses and jasmine. And look, this was us keeping it low-key because the other side weren’t also Pakistani.
I also had a Haldi event before the Mehendi, which my in-laws were possibly grateful they were spared from, as during that you have turmeric spread over your face and body and then have to sit there, again with garlands weighing down your neck, as various aunties you’ve never met feed you a multitude of sweets like gulab jamun and ladoo.
Of course my wedding was nowhere as extra as the one Chopra and Jones are having, or half as elaborate as the ones being held on home ground, that is in Pakistan or India itself. Now these weddings are a sight to behold. No one blinks an eye when the wedding guest list extends to 500 people, because listen, your dad’s second-cousin’s wife’s brother would be extremely disappointed if he didn’t receive an invite to your wedding. In fact weddings are so big they even get their own season. “It’s wedding season,” my cousin in Karachi will tell me. “Uff, every weekend I’m going to some wedding event, to the point I’m having to wear some outfits twice!” Imagine.
Wedding season on the sub-continent, if you’re ever caught in the middle of it, runs roughly from mid-October to mid-March. Pack your shiniest, sparkliest outfit or people might pity you, and prepare to be overfed. Because perhaps the best thing about desi weddings, aside from the singing, gossiping, general merriment and having the chance to wear clothes you will probably never don again in everyday life, is the food. Wedding biryani is a dish you won’t soon forget.
Ultimately though if I was going to give Nick Jonas and his family any advice it would be to just go with it. Desi weddings are so extra, but they are also a lot of fun. There’ll be singing, dancing, lots of laughter and tears, and the whole thing will feel like a whirlwind, at the end of which you may say to yourself, what the hell just happened? But when else in your life will you have hundreds of people spend days on end celebrating your relationship with the person you love? Just take it all in, and remember, go easy on the gulab jamun, because you really can have too much of a good thing.
