Band....Baja....Daawat!

The only acceptable reason to go to a wedding, other than to meet your friends and cousins you haven't seen in a long time, or to find potential matches for your sons and daughters who are incapable of socialising, or to judge people on a superficial level with the way they dress, talk, and act or...(you get the point)

...is FOOD!

As we all might know, weddings are a lucrative business in India and for a country that wants to mass-produce doctors and engineers, we tend to socialize a lot based on the size and grandeur of our weddings. Wherever there are people, there is food. The so-called idea of communal cooking and eating doesn't exist in India per se. We don't have any backyard cookouts, but we all meet occasionally at our cousin's wedding and stock up for the winter like hibernating polar bears.

Image Credits: Wallpaper Flare

It is so easy to gatecrash at Indian weddings and the chances of it happening are much higher because of the lavish feasts we find here. Irrespective of the region, religion, caste, devout meat eaters or holistic vegetarians, all wedding food is DELICIOUS. PERIOD.

The most interesting thing about wedding feasts is how varied they can be, from the distinction of North Indian and South Indian marriages to different communities, religions, castes, and the various permutations and combinations of these. We learn a lot about our own differences when we go to someone's wedding and look at their traditions. The question arises: Are we all different people?.....and then you taste the delicious food, and you are like "Never mind, it doesn't matter".

Did you know in 2023 McDonald's started a wedding catering package in Indonesia? They wanted to enter the catering market with this new move. Can you imagine providing your guests with floppy fries and chicken burgers that are drenched in mayonnaise and wilted lettuce? Not hating on McDonald's, but this initiative feels so out of character...for them.

The Indian wedding industry was worth about 3.68 trillion in 2022 and was expected to rise by 200% in 2023. With the rise of more and more people spending, in professional terms, bonkers on weddings to make them more memorable, having a catering service with delicious and delectable dishes from different parts of the country and the world only makes sense.

What can you expect from some popular weddings across India? If you attend a wedding in Kashmir, you can expect some delicious Wazawan started with a kahawa tea. A wedding in Lucknow consists of their world-famous kebabs that just melt in your mouth, along with their biryani with intoxicating smells that distract you from the main event. Coming to the east of the country with West Bengal, expect to see more than a dozen varieties of sweets and sculptures made out of kheer.

In the down south, a traditional feast is served on banana leaf with different types of vegetarian and non-vegetarian preparations that you can shove down your gullet till your stomach is ready to pop and you can't walk with a straight back. Sadly so far, I haven't gone to a wedding where they serve non-vegetarian food. Where I am from, it is customary to serve non-vegetarian food after the wedding is over, at the time of reception. Wedding biryani is a very popular version of biryani, and experiencing it at a Muslim wedding among other things is on my bucket list.

One of the disadvantages of not being adept at basic communication is avoiding big gatherings and therefore, avoiding the chances of eating at weddings. As a golden rule, attending weddings just for the food seems like a steal considering the amount of people you have to interact with and the questions you have to answer about your own marriage......I am stuck in a paradox now...

That's it for this time!

See you next week!