Deinfluence Your South Asian wedding
- raj desai | may 19, 2023
Social media has completely changed weddings as we know it. Here's what to strip away to save money and your sanity.
In the wise words of my father-in-law, weddings only need 3 things to be successful: good food, good music, and good drinks.
If you look at South Asian weddings pre-Instagram, that’s basically what we had. Good food, good music, and good drinks. No signature cocktails. No overdone floral arrangements. No bangle bars, chai stations, or hired singers.
These days, weddings are out of control. Even wedding professionals admit it. A lot of planning stress comes from inconsequential details that seem so important for that Instagram photo! Your wedding day TikTok! Details and decisions you pore over in the quest of a viral social media post, because what greater wedding honor is there than that?!
Admittedly, most of the pomp and circumstance of modern South Asian weddings is of our own making. A combination of the “what will people say” mentality, mixed with a love of Bollywood production, sprinkled with a dash of “I have more money than you” elitism.
And now, with social media as a permanent part of our cultural landscape, South Asian weddings are on steriods.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t need any of it! This is coming from a person who spent a small fortune on gold foil seating cards. I just HAD to have them. Something so small, that cost so much, that had 0 impact on my wedding experience, or my guest’s.
I’m not saying all this to make you feel bad for getting influenced. It happens to all of us. I’m saying it so that you don’t get mired in the BS. To save you stress on certain aspects of weddings that you won’t remember 5 years from now, and that your guests won’t even pay attention to while your wedding is happening.
Excited to deinfluence your wedding? Let’s get into it!
Nix the wedding party
Wedding parties are a recent addition to South Asian weddings. Unlike western weddings, where the wedding party flanks the couple at the altar, your wedding party doesn’t have a place or function in your South Asian ceremony.
Save your friends the pressure of paying for lehengas that they’ll probably never wear again, and yourself the stress of trying to coordinate the looks and movements of bridesmaids and groomsmen.
Nix the bangle bars and favors
I was at a destination wedding in Mexico recently, and there was a small table in the back at the Sangeet that had piles of bangles and bindi packets. My 3 year-old son took one packet of bangles, and the rest stayed there the whole night, untouched.
Again, offering favors, bindis, and bangles has become commonplace at weddings. Why? Your guests could care less. Save yourself the headache, and skip it at your wedding.
Nix the signs
There is a whole Etsy industry unto itself around wedding signage. Yes, it might look good in the pictures. And it might even seem affordable when you shop for it on Etsy. But those babies are expensive to print! And what do you do with it afterwards? Throw it in the trash? Frame it in your house?
Also, if your guests show up to the wedding and need a sign to remind them of that, they’ve got bigger problems. Do yourself a favor and skip the signs.
However, if you *really* want wedding signage, you can save some $ by downloading signs from Dulhan for free. Sign up for our newsletter so I can let you know when they’re available!
Nix the desire for viral wedding content
The weirdest part of recent wedding trends (at least to an old geezer like me) is the desire to make things go viral. A friend once told me that a bride hit her up and requested that she share and promote wedding videos, because the bride was facing lots of pressure to make it go viral. What? Why? From who? Strange.
Making expensive wedding decisions just to get likes is a slippery slope. Don’t do it. It’s weird and gross. Kind of like YouTubers who use their kids for views. Also, coming from someone who looks at wedding content day in and day out, it’s hard to go viral for the same things that everyone else is doing.
You know what they’re not doing? Deinfluencing. Maybe you’ll get that viral content after all.
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