Hi everyone! Though neither one of us practices any religion, my fiance's background is Sikh and Hindu, and mine is Christian (of various types) with some Jewish thrown in by my stepdad's family.
We're creating our own ceremony with an interfaith minister, and including a few meaningful rituals from each of our backgrounds. Unfortunately she's not very familiar with Hindu rituals, but she's willing to include anything we suggest. Figuring out how to do the unity candles was easy, because that's something I'm familiar with. My fiance and I are having a more difficult time with the seven steps/saptapadi.
We'd like to an an adapted version, in English, so everyone attending can understand. My fiance will be dressed in an Indian sherwani, and I'm wearing a western-style dress and veil. The problem is, I've only been to one Indian wedding, and it certainly wasn't in English. My fiance and his parents have only been to a few. He grew up in Maryland, no India, and his parents have been living in Maryland for 40 years now. Even though including this ceremony is important to my fiance, it's not exactly familiar.
Have any of you done this? Can you recommend any great books or websites, for wording or examples, or maybe a video? My fi mentioned seeing a version of this where instead of the bride following the groom around the fire in one slow rotation, they follow each other sort of back and forth with each of the steps. Anyone familiar with this?
I have lots of other questions as well... Should I tie my veil to his dupati (do you even call it that when it's a man's wedding scarf, that goes around the neck? or is that just for a woman?) Should we try to find a ghee lamp with a wick, or just use an alcohol burner? should we do all of this on a metal tray, for safety? are we supposed to throw puffed rice into the fire, or are we going to burn the place down/set my dress on fire?