I have been brought up in this beautiful city called Jamshedpur. I did my schooling from Rajendra Vidyalaya and Sacred Heart Convent School.
I am here to share the story of my “Fairy tale” wedding with my city.
Weddings are meant to be “ Happy” for everybody, so why is it that the bride's family has to suffer the pain of letting their daughter go? I got married on 21st November,2021 with my college sweetheart. His name is Abhisek Tripathy. Ours was a Bihari-Odia wedding.
Our wedding was held at Vijoya International, Puri,Odisha.
I was the happiest bride ever. Dancing around with my friends and family in every event . Not just me, my family was happy too. We decided not to perform rituals like “Kanya-Daan” and “Bidaai” and that changed the whole vibe of the wedding. It was a happy weddding , more that that the wedding was EQUAL. One of the best moments of the wedding was when we painted each other red by putting sindur on each other, we decided to protect each other forever.
Abhisek and I met in the year 2016. He was my senior in college. We have been together as equals since day 1. We took a stand to be equals in the wedding too and our families were supportive. Grateful for that.
All the finances of the wedding , right from mehendi to shaddi were shared by both the families. Instead of performing regressive rituals like Kanya-Daan and Bidai, we held each others hand and walked down to the “Mandap” to start this beautiful journey called “Marraige”.
It was not easy to hear people talking and literally questioning our decision to not perform rituals like “Kanya-Daan” it has been prevalent since ages, but at the end of the day it was about me and my question to them was.. how can you “donate” a person? Its high time we must stop treating daughters as commodities.
Marriage is a beautiful blend of two families , two cultures and two people accepting each other for a lifetime and not a medium to make girls feel like they never belonged to their own parents? If I talk about myself I would love to be my parents daughter for the next 7 births.
After the rituals got over , I went to My room and changed into my pjs. I was happily meeting my relatives and friends and just being with my parents and my sister instead of bidding them goodbye, after all it was a big day for them too and we had to celebrate of course.
We often see celebrities fighting marriage stereotypes and I am so proud of them for making it a little easier for us. We wanted to share across a message that anyone and everyone can do it. It’s all about taking a stand.
We are two individuals who took a stand against patriarchy and made our wedding a very happy one touchwood with full support from our families .
Recently our wedding story was covered by one of the popular Instagram page. The love and support we received after that was overwhelming.We also received backlash, there were people accusing and questioning us for not obeying and going according to the so called “Rituals” but who cares? We were happy, our friends and family were happy. Isn't that what matters? And oh lets not forget Sati was a tradition too, but can we ever justify that? Certainly NOT.
I cannot vouch if we did it the right way, but I can certainly say that we did it the equal way and that was right for us. That is what made our wedding “A fairy Tale Wedding”
(The views expressed in the article are the writer's own)