Berkley Center

Somewhere on the side of the road in rural India, four sweaty and tired women piled out of my host parents tiny Volkswagen. Three hours outside the city of Pune, we found crowds of people bedecked in colorful finery standing amongst dusty motorcycles and a few cars, slowly making their way into the village. Following my host mom, we moved towards the village center, silk-covered buildings and elaborate light fixtures depicting Lord Ganesha leading the way. Entering the village square, 4,000 decadently adorned Indians sitting cross-legged on mats greeted us, and we sat among them to watch the beautiful bride and groom perform the ceremony that would make them man and wife. With much throwing of rice, much singing, and an elaborate firework display, the couple was wed, and the feasting began. Were this America, we would be described as wedding crashers, but in India, we were honored guests.

There are few occasions more beautiful, more colorful, or more extravagant than Indian weddings. In my four weeks in India, I have attended three such weddings, each one bursting with fresh flowers, delicious food, beautiful clothes, glistening gold and jewels, and undoubtedly, tremendous price tags. The three day festivities of Indian weddings, including elaborate ceremonies for the families of both the bride and the groom culminating in the main ceremony and reception that might be attended by anywhere from 100 to 10,000 people, can cost on average anywhere from 500,000 to 15 million rupees ($9,000 to $250,000).

Indian weddings are not only a supreme celebration in Indian culture, they are also, unfortunately, the cause for a lot of heartache. The social pressure to display one's wealth and prosperity by throwing a lavish and decadent wedding for your children drives many middle and lower class families to drastic measures, including borrowing money from moneylenders and falsifying microfinance applications to receive loans. Despite the competing cultural aversion to debt, the desire to through a wedding is in a sense a paradoxical way to repay "social debt," of throwing a party in gratitude for all the parties, weddings, and festivals you have attended.

This "festival dilemma," the irrationality that people tend to display in response to social pressures around spending for festivals and weddings, particularly in South and East Asia, is one that development economists have been grappling with for many years. It is a unique and valuable problem to consider, because it forces those interested in human development to ask not only what makes people richer, but what makes people happier. Obviously falling into immense debt and poverty as a result of a wedding or festival does not make people happier, but social acceptance, gratitude, fun, and celebration are not experiences that people are willing to sacrifice purely in the name of economic growth.

Despite the economic paradox that Indian weddings pose, and the gross inequalities they illuminate, it was still a remarkable and humbling experiencing. The differences I saw between the evening wedding in Pune with its exclusive guest list, the daytime Punjabi wedding on a Saturday afternoon with its outdoor reception, and the massive wedding in my host parents' home village illustrated the cultural diversity that exists in an extraordinarily limited space. But more importantly, it highlighted the similarities across Indian cultures, and the joy of the families in the common union, was always evident. For me, a sense of community, of generosity and giving, were central to the wedding experience. Indian weddings are about the union of people and creating new bonds, about celebrating togetherness and reconfirming the strength of the community which, luckily for me, involves the welcoming of strangers as family.