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Wedding: Blending Ceremony Elements

Wedding: Blending Ceremony Elements

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:38 pm by Ambaa Choate

Wedding: Blending Ceremony Elements 2015-03-13T22:38:06-04:00 Ambaa Choate

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On a lot of the wedding sites I like to read I hear complaints that it’s hard to find examples of blended Hindu ceremonies or really any interfaith ceremonies. It can be hard to get inspiration and figure out how to integrate your wedding into a cohesive whole when you are planning an interfaith or intercultural ceremony.

For me personally, I always saw a wedding ceremony as the blank canvas, or maybe a new iPhone. You just add in your widgets or apps where ever you want. Each element of a ceremony is a widget. You put in as many as you want in whatever order makes sense to you.

Wedding Diary: Blending Ceremony Elements

Here are the Hindu ceremony elements that we are going to include:

Greeting each other with garlands
Walking seven times around the fire
Tying of the mangalasutra
Placement of Sindoor

Also, we will have a mandap and lots of marigold blossoms.

For the western parts we will have:

Walking down an aisle
Having a wedding party (bridesmaids and groomsmen)
Exchange of vows
Exchange of rings
Hand fasting

The ceremony is being officiated by a friend who knows how to do the hand binding ceremony. When I first started thinking about doing an interfaith wedding, I kind of knew right away that I wasn’t going to bring in a Hindu priest. I was a little bit sad about that, but I felt that it would be a more accessible ceremony for most of our friends and family if we leaned more heavily on the western structure and added Hindu elements to that.

However, I didn’t have to be disappointed for long. When I told one of my cousins (who was married in a full Hindu ceremony in India twelve years ago), she had a great suggestion. She told me that she knew the priests at the local temple in my hometown and that she could help arrange a simple Vedic ceremony for us if we’d like. We were thrilled at that idea. My mother wanted to have us come up for a weekend and have a little reception/party to celebrate our marriage with friends and family who wouldn’t travel to us, so we realized that was the perfect chance to have a real Hindu ceremony. We haven’t picked the weekend yet, but we plan to have an official ceremony with a very small group, just us and my immediate family. Then we’ll have a party at my parents’ house later. I’m really happy that we’re going to get to do both!

Bridal Bootcamp

I’m struggling a lot with the getting in shape.

I feel exhausted from keeping track of everything I eat and making the best food choices over and over and over. I try really hard, give it as much will power as I’ve got, and I feel like just one slip up destroys my progress. Every other week I lose a little, then gain a little, then lose a little, then gain a little. After a couple of years on weight watchers, I’m still exactly the same weight I was when I joined!

It’s making me feel really overwhelmed and hopeless. I don’t want to accept my current weight as my new normal.

However, I need a break from the tracking. I decided to quit weight watchers because I don’t want to keep paying for it when it’s not working for me. I know it does work and I’m not sure why I’m having so much trouble with it. I may check in with a doctor and see if there’s something else going on with my body. But for now I’m just going to take a break for a couple of weeks and enjoy eating again.

Too often now I feel guilty and upset every time I put anything in my mouth. I’m getting no enjoyment from my food. And that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I’m going to try to eat reasonably, enjoy my food, and be more careful not to eat out of habit. That’s where I’m going to focus my will power because I do notice that I sometimes eat ice cream even when I don’t actually want it just because I am a person who likes ice cream. I need to break that habit.

After a few weeks to de-stress I will go to calorie counting since there are free apps to do that.

I’m going to keep going to the gym because the working out is making me feel really good and keeping my spirits high too.

intercultural wedding

planning a wedding ceremony

planning an interfaith wedding

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