Adiba Khat will be grooming everything bridal in a new series on the art of the South Asian wedding.
An elegant shade of red catches someone’s attention and like ripples in a pond, all faces turn towards the star attraction. The bride has begun the longest walk on perhaps the most important day of her life: her wedding day.
South Asians have very special way of turning what could be a simple, one day affair into a series of headache-inducing but equally mesmerising events, each with a particular ritual significance.
A typical South Asian wedding consists of three separate occasions: the engagement, the henna night, and the wedding day. But this short list is often expanded by adding Islamic events such as a nikah and walima day. That’s a whole lot of family time – and money.
With an average price tag of £30,000, the South Asian wedding sequence is all about location, catering and clothes.
There are 200,000 Asians living in East London, and many of them will go to Green Street – also the current home of West Ham United – for all manner of wedding items. Eighty Asian fashion shops in the area cater for everything any bridezilla could possibly want or need.
Apart from the question of finance, family drama and Asian weddings go together like horse and carriage, love and marriage. With a tendency to keep in relatively close contact with third and fourth cousins, there is an equal tendency for said cousins, to say nothing of those closer to home, to be sensitive about wedding invitations and to become instantly offended if for any reason the invite doesn’t arrive.
The stress is enough to make any bride break out in spots, especially on her ‘perfect day’.
Despite the torment of family feuds and possible financial ruin, Asian weddings offer a rich palette of colour, and they deserve to be studied in the same manner as a Monet. I will be depicting these mega-events in a series of forthcoming articles.
