Hello everybody, what comes to your mind when you listen this song?
As you know we use to do the orals presentations together, and we normally talk about different topics related with us, but today we are going to talk about different kinds of marriage, so, we have had to do the oral in a different way, overall because we aren’t involved in the topic.
The marriage is the strongest expression of love, sure that some people think that love is one long sweet dream and marriage is the alarm clock… but we don’t think so, always, if you choose the correct person and you if you don’t do it because of money.
In the old societies, unlikely, most of the formal unions of a couple were arranged. Are you thinking about Pride and Prejudice? So, well done, because it is one of the best examples of this kind of marriages.
In all the cultures, the wedding is influenced by family, social and religious aspects.
But all of you know that this is not the most important thing to get a good marriage. The party, from our point of view, is the less important thing in this ambit, so, the most important is the feelings of the boy and girlfriend, and of course, their love. We think like that because we live in a modern country, where love is expressed liberally, but we have not to forget that in some towns of our world arrange marriage continues being the most popular one in their society.
All societies have different ways to prepare young people to their marriage life. Years ago, the family was who teach to the youngest of the house the values of the love and of the couple. During our life, we receive a lot of information from our society about what it is supposed the man and the woman, so you can observe that more or less everybody in the same country, act in a similar way.
This is another important point which is reflected in pride’s and prejudice, because there you can see that in spite of being from a different social class, all of them act in the same way in front of different situations.
By the way, how you know each society celebrate weddings in a different kinds of ceremonies and in our oral presentation we want show you some ones.
INDIAN WEDDINGS
The first one which we want to talk about is the Indian wedding, which we thing that is really interesting and very different from European marriages, you will see: to the diversity of Indian culture, the wedding style vary depending on the state, the region, the religion… while the Christians of India usually follow a more or less Western wedding ceremony, the Indian Hindus, Muslims, follow traditions really different from the west.
We are going to talk about the traditional Hindu wedding, because we think that is nicest:
Before the wedding day, the bride’s parents travel to the groom’s place to formalize the relationship. A really big party is organized by the boyfriend’s family to celebrate this occasion. Typically, only the men relatives are allowed to come to this celebration, female relatives are not present. After this stage, wedding is arranged and the groom and the bride start to prepare all they need for the wedding party.
Wedding ceremony
Varmala/Jaimala: this is the next phase of the ceremony. This stage normally takes place late in the nigh, often starting at midnight and lasting until the early hour’s morning. We think that this is a really nice tradition, we really love night’s weddings.
The main part of the wedding takes place normally in a garden, where there is a reception and a feast, this part is accompanied by the groom arriving with his family and friends in a procession. Meanwhile he is walking, the bride used to wait for him in the ceremony.
Immediately after the groom has arrived, the couple meets and exchange garlands in another ceremony. During this ceremony food is served and the guests present gifts to them.
The more ritualistic part, which involves a priest, is the last one. We are used to do it different because in our weddings the religious part is normally the first one.
After eating, the groom and the bride sit beside the fire and the priest chants, in this moment the groom and the bride exchange their feelings in front of many gods and goddesses.
In the morning, the couple has a final breakfast in the girl’s house; she leaves her parents’ house at the end escorted by the groom. Traditionally this phase is accompanied by the bride’s family tears, and sometimes, they throw white rice.
So, if we compare the Indian wedding with our, we noticed that it’s largest than the Spanish ceremony, and they give lot of importance to the tradition and religion.
On the other hand, we want to talk about the ARABIC WEDDING, particularly the Muslim wedding.
This kind of marriage is strongly linked to the culture and religion, and as you know, most of the marriages in the Arabian world are arranged, because when a man sees a woman and he likes her, he tells his mother about her and his family starts asking about her family and starts working like a detective. The family of the bride takes care of the money and the social status of the groom’s family. So, if the man is rich and he comes from a traditional family, the family of the bride will accept the engagement.
As you can see, it’s like in pride and prejudice because the families, who have a daughter, have to accept the marriage proposal because women can’t work so they can’t earn money, and that’s the reason why they have to try to marriage with rich men. It’s obvious that Muslims live in an old fashioned society.
One of the main characteristic of this fixed weddings, is that the first date takes place in the bride’s house. There, the mothers first meet, and they talk during hours, meanwhile the bride and the groom sit in one place next to them, but where they can’t listen to their mothers speaking. After this first meeting, if both families agree with the wedding, the men of the groom’s family come to the bride’s home; there they meet all the men who are the bride’s relatives. The eldest men of the groom’s side makes a speech asking for the bride’s hand and after that the bride’s father makes another speech saying yes.
Then, they drink and eat to celebrate the engagement.
A few days later, the official ceremony takes place and the bride and the groom become wife and husband. The ceremony is like the proposal party but it is considered more official because it is in front of God.
Then there is the Henna night, where the bride’s female friends join at a house party called Henna, that includes food, drinks, and a lot of dancing and a woman draws Henna on the bride’s and guests’ palms and feet.
In the wedding, the bride and the groom sit in the Kosha that consists in two comfortable seats in front of the guests and where the bride and the groom switch rings. With this ritual, the festivities begin.
Usually there is a belly dancer or a singer- and in modern weddings,sometimes a disc jockey- that entertains the guests, who will dance and sing with the new wed couple and the groom is usually tossed in the air by his friends.
Then the bride and the groom cut the cake. After that the bride throws her flower bouquet behind her back; the female that catches it is lucky, because she will be the next to marry.
Next, the couple open the buffet for the guests, that usually consists on salads, meats, stews, fruits and other Arabian dishes. After that, the wedding party is over. The new wed couple usually stay a night or two at the hotel.
To conclude, we must say that there are lots of different kinds of wedding around the world, but we decided to choose only two because we want to explain them at all, and we haven’t enough time to talk about the others.
We imagine you know other traditional weddings, and in fact, every society has its tradition but nowadays, most of them have a common characteristic because in the modern societies people marry because of love and that’s a great improve between the pride and prejudice times.
Can you imagine that your parents force you to marry someone?
This is one of the worst things can happen to a person, We can imagine it!
