For many modern-day Indians, religious rituals during a wedding can be tweaked and altered according to convenience.?
From some couples opting for women as priests to some cancelling elaborate rituals and keeping the wedding as quickly possible, the traditional Hindu wedding has witnessed a sea change.?
More recently, a wedding between a man from Madhya Pradesh and a German woman set the bar high in terms of unconventional traditions.?
The couple chose to conduct their saat phere in four different languages.?The pheras, as a result, took four hours as the mantras were recited in Sanskrit, Hindi, German and English.
The?saat phere?is a ritual in which the bride and the groom take seven circles around the sacred fire in the mandap. The ritual is significant as it marks the ultimate union of the bride and the groom.
In most Indian weddings, people get utterly bored during important rituals as the mantras are chanted in Sanskrit, a language that many sadly don't understand today.
For their wedding, the couple decided to hire people who'd explain the significance of every single mantra so the guests could be equally clued in.?
The wedding?mantras?recited by Pandit Pradyuman Sharma were translated into German by Sid Malhotra from West Bengal and into English by Ashish Yadav who came from the United States,?Dainik Bhaskar?reported.?The wedding ceremony was attended by guests from Germany, United States, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Australia.
At another unconventional wedding that took place on February 5,?40-year-old Sumanta Ghosh and 38-year-old Paromita Ghosh, both with a hearing disability, had a?sign language expert Rajani Banerjee translate the wedding mantras for them and their guests.
The ceremony took a little longer than usual ceremonies, the bride and groom were happy as each and every mantra was translated for them by Banerjee.?
At another wedding that took place in Kolkata last year, the?ceremony in Kolkata which was conducted by four women priests. At this wedding, the father of the bride refused to perform the kanyadaan, the act of 'giving away' one's daughter as a gift to her husband and in-laws.?
Conventional customs and styles at Hindu weddings are steadily being edited and it's only paving the way for a more progressive outlook that the Indian society desperately needs.?