THE VIRUS VS. THE BIG, FAT INDIAN WEDDING

The groom, Vijay Reddy, who works with Australian government, drove to Mumbai from Hyderabad and was ousted by two building managements before he could find a room at a hotel where he married Payal. The newlyweds went to Australia as soon as they could. Payal’s mehendi ceremony happened in a car in India!

Meanwhile, advertising agency owner Pratik Doshi, 35, also insisted on going ahead with his wedding, which was held at home with most guests attending via Zoom.

“There was no mahurat (auspicious day) after June so we saw no point in delaying the wedding,” he says. “Our wedding was scheduled for

April, so we postponed it for a while, hoping the lockdown would ease. But finally we decided to just marry.”

Part of the difficulty of holding even a small marriage ceremony during the lockdown was the fact that most government offices were closed. This was tough on 25-year-old Sephra Abraham, a consultant, and her then fiancé, 26-year-old Yash Joshi. The two of them live and work in separate continents and had decided to marry in India this April – but the lockdown tried their patience.

“The registrar’s office only opened on May 20, and finally Yash and I were legally married,” says Sephra. “Coordinating our dates of arrival and getting our families together was the main reason why we decided to get married as soon as we got a date.”

When the registrar’s office finally opened, Sephra and Yash, who were located in different parts of Mumbai, were given only an hour-and-a-half to get to the court before the senior officer was scheduled to leave for the day.

Meanwhile in New York,

Prerna Menon, a mental health clinician, and her partner Sam Ayn Uretsky, married in reverse during the pandemic. They had already been married at New York’s City Hall in 2019, but were planning a big Jewish-indian (J-indian) wedding in 2020. Then the pandemic happened, so they got engaged again instead. didn’t want to cut down their guest lists,” she says. “Luckily the vendors and properties have been very accommodating in terms of refunds and the change of date.”

Unfortunately, most wedding planners and others involved in the business of weddings are suffering. “Most couples have postponed their weddings, but a lot of them have cancelled outright, either choosing to hold a small ceremony at home or shifting the wedding to another town,” says Neelam.

Coronavirus has brought a new discipline into our lives: the need to sanitise. Thus bridal make-up gets a whole other layer, says Parul Garg, a make-up artist. All make-up brushes are sanitised, the artist wears a face shield, the premises are frequently fogged and temperature checks are carried out often.

“We have some brides booked for June and are hoping business will pick

In the recent Netflix hit Axone, a “longdistance wedding” is shown with the bride in Delhi and her sister standing in for her with her groom in her hometown

“We wanted something to celebrate and Sam, my wife, proposed to me wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Will you marry me again?’” laughs Prerna.

While the lockdown has impacted the wedding business, Neelam Madnani, one of the co-founders of The Vow Weavers by N & N, a wedding planning agency, is hoping for the best. “We were working on a wedding scheduled for April but due to the lockdown it had to be postponed because the families

AFTER THE COVID

WEDDING

British Grazia paid homage to the National Health System (NHS) in it’s April 2020 issue, with split covers featuring real-life NHS workers

(Above) The June covers of Vogue Italia’s June issue this year have been drawn by kids aged between two and 10; In 1992, the year of economic crisis Harper’s Bazaar came up with this modern and paired down cover for its September issue