The Hindu Wedding Custom

The main steps involved in a traditional Hindu wedding are as follows:
Engagement
The engagement, involving vagdana or oral agreement and lagna-patra written declaration, commences with the arrival of the groom's party at the bride's residence, often in the form of a formal procession.
Aarti

Hathlewa
After being led to the wedding mandup, the bride and groom have their hands tied together. The Panditji does a puja to Lord Ganesh and then puts a coin & mehendi on the groom’s right hand where the round empty spot is (where no mehendi was put) and ties his hand with the brides. This puja is done schedule in advance based on an auspicious time & date.
Havan

Saptapadi
The bridegroom gets up from his seat holding his bride's right hand. He then goes around the Holy Fire (Agni) from the right side, by lifting his bride's right foot at each step. This is done for seven steps. With each step, he recites a mantra addressed to the bride with the following meaning.

Let Lord Maha Vishnu follow each one of your steps for the following specific purposes.
:To give you unlimited food.
:To give you excellent health and energy.
:Todained in Vedas, during your life time.
:To give you happiness in life.
:To make your cows and good animals to grow in strength and in numbers.
:To make all the seasons be beneficial to you.
:To make the homams (sacrifices to be done in Holy Fire) to be performed by you in your life as ordained in Vedas, successful and free from hindrances.
The idea behind this is to pray to Lord Vishnu, the protector of life, for his blessings in marital life. The groom then recites a mantra to convey the following meaning:

Kanya Daan
Kanya Daan is performed by the father of the bride in presence of a large gathering that is invited to witness the wedding.
The father pours out a libation of sacred water symbolizing the giving away of the daughter to the bride groom. The groom recites Vedic hymns to Kama, the god of love, for pure love and blessings.
As a condition for offering his daughter for marriage, the father of the bride requests a promise from the groom for assisting the bride in realizing the three ends : dharma, artha, and kama. The groom makes the promise by repeating three times that he will not fail the bride in realizing dharma, artha and kama.
Vidaai
This is considered to be the most emotional ritual, when the bride leaves her parents' home and makes her way to her husband's. Family and friends, who also shower her with blessings and gifts, give her a tearful farewell. The male members of the bride's family bid farewell to the groom by applying the traditional 'tilak' (vermilion) on his forehead and shower him with gifts.
Information obtained from Wikipedia.
Labels: World Wedding Customs
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3 Comments:
Cool. Nice pics!
Well, the credit goes eleswhere. If you click on the pictures, it will take you to the original site where we got them. Thanks.
this is a great article! i'm doing my wedding program now and these explanations will help our Sri Lankan guests a lot! :)
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