This time last week, we were both sat in a school hall in Hayes celebrating the marriage of my cousin Daniel to his long-time girlfriend Jas. They had both been and the same university studying medicine and ended up as junior Doctor’s in Basingstoke. The issue though was that Jas is Sikh, and Daniel most definitely isn’t, so there was certainly of goings on in the background to get to last Sunday. All credit to Dan he agreed to the full Sikh wedding – which as you can see from the picture included growing a beard – and everything seemed to go pretty well okay.
Unfortunately, with an important service at St James, and Carolyn my fellow Churchwarden away I missed the actual wedding ceremony, but Beth went along to that, and I arrived in time for the reception. Not ever having been to a Sikh wedding before I can’t comment on quite where the schedule differed from normal, but when it came to speeches only my Uncle, Dan’s father, Daniel and the best man made speeches, when you’d usually expect the Father of the Bride to give a speech. We also had several hours of disco between the starter and main course with the meal, but perhaps that is because apparently at a traditional Sikh wedding the host have little idea who is ultimately going to be there.
The invitation we got to the wedding was addressed to myself and Beth – usually the way it works, however when my Uncle was confirming numbers he found that he had no details of replies for the other half of the guest list, and discovered that they had, as is traditional gone to the head of each family, and as is traditional nobody had RSVP’d. My uncle was also warned that they had gone to the households, so they could reasonably expect almost anybody in the family to turn up. It may well be for some other unrelated reason, but if you don’t know how many guests will be there, having the main meal relatively late in proceedings gives you some opportunity to feed everybody.
Having said that, having the disco part way through does cause problems, particularly for people who don’t like the noise – and despite the fact we were seated on the opposite side of the hall from the disco it was still really loud. Incidentally, the people providing the disco had a decidedly odd name – Massacre Sounds – considering the meaning of the word usually relates to some sort of mass killing, it seems a weird name, all sorts of wrong connotations when you’re marketing to events like weddings and other parties!
Anyway, we had a good time, and the Bride and Groom certainly seemed to enjoy themselves which is the main thing. I’ve posted a selection of our pictures from the day, which include a chance to see the spectacular (and apparently rather heavy) dress, and my brother trying to hide the other three cans behind his back as he heads back to the table!
A couple of miscellaneous points to mention. Curious discovery of the day is that Beth is now related by marriage to one of the other teachers at her school. Beth met up with her at the ceremony and found out that Jas’s grandfather and he colleagues grandfather were brothers – not quite sure what the relationship is actually titled. The other point came up from the Best Man’s speech, with the revelation of the day being that Dan was in fact a former trainspotter – sadly led astray by my brother, who thanks to the fact that he did it with his best mate, probably won’t have to contend with that being highlighted on his wedding day!
