My Sister's Wedding Invitation

by Sidhuram
(Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India)

I was in charge of making the invitation card for my sister’s wedding this year. Just like any other wedding, a traditional Indian wedding has lots of preparation to be done before hand.

Being a land of rituals, Indian weddings are never short of the color and drama that add spice to any function. Also, designing a wedding invitation in India, especially in the Southern part, calls for some expertise, as it is customary to include a list of the names of people who are held in high esteem in the society. Failure to do so may cause those people to take it as an insult.



So, when my father asked me to design a wedding invitation, I didn’t want to make the same ol’ thing. Therefore, the first thing I decided was to avoid expanding the length of the invitation by adding a list of names and their family status. To me, I just needed people who were genuinely interested in the welfare of my sister to attend the wedding and those who do so will never be interested in the fanfare.

Hence, I included the name of the bride and the groom and their parents’ name, along with a mention of the grandparents’ name so that people will get to know the legacy of the family.

A typical Indian wedding will include a picture of a god, usually Ganesha (symbolizing the remover of obstacles), in the top of the card. But, being a devotee of Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharishi, an Advaitic Saint in the state of Tamilnadu, whose wisdom transcends boundaries, I was of the opinion that we added his photograph on the top as he meant everything to me and of course, to us. This idea was well received by my parents and we went ahead with it.

There were plenty of designs available with the printer, but I needed the invitation to be polite and to the point. So I insisted that the invitation should be simple. To my surprise, our relatives loved the simplicity of the invitation and, moreover, the idea to include the Saint’s photograph in the invitation was much appreciated.