“Weddings should relate to Mumbai personality,”
says Monica Dogra, musician and actor.
In Mumbai, you’re short on space and that’s the biggest problem. I like it when people get creative about the venues for their weddings. Some of my friends also fight with their parents to ensure that they don’t have super-long pheras, and just have a wedding that translates into something relatable to the Mumbai personality, which is basically someone who’s forward thinking. We’re also very time conscious. Another thing I like about the attitude here is that people are just like, “What’s the point?” Weddings often become less and less about the bride and groom. And it’s nice when girls stand up against that and make their weddings about the couple. It shows at the wedding.
One of the most fun weddings I’ve ever been to was when there were only 30 people at the ceremony and it was a South Indian wedding at a simple mandir. Nothing fancy. It was just beautiful. It was so personal. And one of our friends has this bungalow in Bandra with a beautiful terrace. So we all helped out, got a bunch of tables and things set up on the roof, and we were drinking and giving speeches for each other and it was exactly what I think a wedding should be. It should be about two people uniting lives, not about pomp and circumstance. It was so perfect and so rare.
I also went to a wedding just outside of Bombay in Lonavla. For the sangeet, all my friends, who are musicians, built this awesome looking stage that looked like an old Bollywood film set with bulb lights spelling out the bride and groom’s name in the backdrop. The performance was themed to a medley of all of their favourite songs. We got a list of their favourite songs and surprised them by putting together an hour and a half long show of these tracks which was tied together with their story in between. It was really cool.
The weddings I’ve been to that I’ve loved were the ones at people’s homes with flowers that we’d have strewn ourselves and with very DIY vibes. I mean how far can you go with glitter, lighting and silk? Now it’s time to tone it down.