Weddings. They’re everywhere and now they’re on your Facebook timeline. In your parents’ time, weddings were only meant for those who were invited; the rest would have to be content with looking at photo albums if and when they visited and, for some reason, consented to the same. Now, chances are, if you’re in your 20s (or have friends, siblings or friends’ siblings in that age group), you can’t do one full scroll through your timeline without coming across some wedding-related infomedia from your social circles.
Social media has turned weddings, once largely private, into semi-public affairs. You may not have been invited to one, but you do know that Jaanvi and Nishith’s wedding hashtag on Instagram was #JaanhithMeinJaari (a portmanteau that puns on the Hindi phrase for ‘public service announcement’; not all hashtags are this creative, unfortunately). You may not have sampled the Very Expensive Catering but someone took the trouble to point out that there was a separate vegan counter and the Vietnamese choices there were pretty damn good. You may not have seen with your own eyes the very expensive trousseau but thanks to extremely high-res photographs clicked by <First name> <Last name> Photography, you can admire its intricacies and tastefulness (or you could hate on it with glee, because let’s never forget what social media’s true purpose is).
On one hand, I suppose it gives couples a sense of relief that even their friends and acquaintances on social media can be a part of their celebrations without having to actually attend. On the other, it encourages a sense of oversharing and conspicuous consumption. Earlier, you’d simply hear about fancy weddings – today, we see them, which naturally leads to us, sometimes, wanting the same things at similar scale. This may be a contributing factor to why weddings from north to south India, once poles apart, are now starting to look similar. For instance, the ‘sangeet’, a celebratory pre-wedding event involving singing and dance performances by both sides, is garnering popularity all across the country (even in the northeast).
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I’m no fan of weddings, to be honest, unless they’re of close friends (because I’m happy for them) or if they’re really creative. A good friend who is well known in the indie music scene as a musician, rapper, and video presenter/producer married his long-time girlfriend a couple of years ago; their wedding party was an actual DIY music festival of sorts, held in a modest resort on the Mumbai-Nashik highway, where musician friends performed for free. I don’t remember feeling the need to log on to social media while I was there.
The year after, I attended four weddings that were more or less the same: large, glitzy, moderately expensive to expensive affairs (I presume) held for the benefit of the families involved. In these cases, I found myself doing everything I would never ordinarily do: click pictures; use official wedding hashtags; be part of group selfies; dance for the benefit of multiple cameras, including GoPros attached to drones (these shots will later be edited and colour-graded for the purpose of cheesy wedding ‘films’ — not wedding videos, mind you — which will auto-play on everyone’s Facebook timeline). When you can’t beat ‘em, I guess the least you could do is join ‘em.
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