Change in Food Serving Styles During Marriages

Indian weddings, especially the South Indian weddings, are not complete without serving sumptuous food, to the invited guests. On completing the  nichayathartham or betrothal function, the first thing that comes to the mind of both the bride and groom’s families, is fixing of a decent wedding hall and employing the services of a good wedding planner, for wedding and catering arrangements.

The food served during a marriage, plays a vital role in making the marriage memorable. It is always advisable to avail the services of an experienced wedding planner like Athithi, to serve the purpose. Such high end wedding planners, normally, will never come with pre-conceived ideas, instead, they will make an open-ended approach with their suggestions, to improve the expressed ideas of the client.

During the yesteryears, only sit-down and eat on plantain leaf or plate menu option was available. The ever changing lifestyles, have necessitated the introduction of a range of eating patterns and menu options. The most sought after eating styles include, Live Food Counters, Buffet arrangement and sit down and eat on plantain leaf or plate facility.

Live Food Counters

The Live Food Counters are the latest addition to the food serving style. The arrangement, will have a number of Live Food Counters, each catering to a particular variety of food items. The limited food items, are prepared fresh before the eyes of the guest and served hot. Some of the food items, served in the Live Food Counters include, chat items, Dosa & Vada items, specialist food items from Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjabi, Mughalai, Marwadi, Kashmiri and others. Such food counters function during the tiffin, lunch and dinner timings.

Buffet arrangement

Buffet style of dining has more or less become a norm, for the  evening reception in marriages. This self service or assisted service eating facility, either have all the food items set up in rows over a table or in smaller sized cubical arrangements, each serving a particular type of food item.

Normally, buffet style serving is arranged in roomy places, to facilitate easy movement of guests. The facility, enables the guests to eat food items of their choice, while enjoying a chat or discussion with their family or friends.  The buffet style arrangement will have starters, other food items and desserts, to complete the food course.

The variety of dishes served at buffets, allows the guests to taste a range of dishes and indulge in feasting the items of their choice. The arrangement, adequately meets the requirements of those guests who enjoy eating, as well as those who are on a diet and eat less. The arrangement, enables serving more variety of food items.

AthithicateringTable arrangement

This traditional style of food serving is still valued as the best. The food is served in a pre-determined order, over a plantain leaf or plate, kept before the seated guests. The arrangement, allows the guests to taste all the food varieties served and request second serving on items of their liking. When compared to buffet arrangement, the sit down and eat facility allows serving only a limited variety of food.

Conclusion

The change in societal outlook, lifestyle, national and international level contacts, have necessitated the changes in food serving methods, during a wedding. Presently, the bigger wealthy weddings, observe comparatively increased level of rituals and enjoy more guest participation. Such weddings participated by national and international guests follow their own customized type of food serving styles and arrangements to suit the tastes and interests of the invited guests.

Insure Your Wedding Against Unanticipated Events

A wedding is always special. It is one function that brings joy to a number of families. The increased affordability has prompted a number of Indian families to go for a lavish wedding. The wedding planning industry, assists in making the weddings more enjoyable with innovations, such as theme wedding and destination wedding, temple wedding and others.

The marriages during yesteryears, though, lasted for a number of days, were simple and uncomplicated. They were not subjected to the complications and other elaborations of the current day weddings. Even the wedding receptions arranged only by very wealthy families, were missing most of the posh and lavish arrangements of today. The marriages were normally conducted within the village or city using the help of the relatives and friends living close by. Very rarely, people travelled long distances either to make a wedding arrangement or to attend a marriage.

Present day weddings, on the contrary, are more lavish with a variety of associated celebrations. The disbursals for these expensive weddings include jewellery, dresses, catering arrangement, wedding planner arrangement, payment to wedding venue, video and photographers, travel expenses and others. Therefore, successful arranging and conducting of such a weddings largely depended on a range of external sources. Failure or non-complying their part by any of the external sources,  will partially or totally affect the wedding procedures.

It is still an inexplicable fact, how most of these weddings, performed by spending lakhs of rupees and at times even crores of rupees, gets completed without major problems. There were also few instances, where the weddings cancelled due to  unforeseen circumstances have resulted in huge loss to the families that have spent a good amount of money to complete the wedding arrangements.

In India, the idea of insuring a wedding is yet to penetrate into the minds of the people who are arranging them. Normally, the parents, while arranging the marriages don’t ever wish or perceive any negative occurrence that will lead to the postponement or cancellation of a marriage. Most of them consider the very idea of insuring a marriage as negative thinking and don’t attempt to insure the marriages.
But, there is a visible change in the mindset of the people, especially amongst those who spend huge money in wedding arrangements. They have become more practicable and understand the ground realities associated with the present day marriage arrangements, where they have little or no control over any of the eventualities. The number of people thinking of insuring the marriage is expected to go up in the coming years.

In India, the insurance companies, till today, consider the wedding as an event and cover it only under the event insurance. Such a policy compensates any damage to the property at the marriage venue including the hard cash, cancellation or postponement of the wedding and sickness or personal accident to the persons named in policy. It is possible to customise the clauses of the policy to suit the individual requirements.
The policy also can cover various wedding related functions such as Mehendi, Sangeet, evening party, real wedding and the reception. It can prevent  the loss to the insurer on account of the cancellation and postponement of a marriage on the sudden death of a close relative who is ailing, food poisoning, and fire or burglary at the wedding hall. The policy also covers the falling sick of a groom or bride or any other immediate family member named in the policy and their hospitalization within a week before the actual wedding date. Though, a wedding insurance policy will not cover a wedding cancellation due to differences of opinion between the wedding parties, the policy covers the non-turning up of groom due to dispute in dowry payment.

It is possible to cover a single event of the wedding or the full wedding right from the first day. The premium to cover a wedding ranges from 0.75% to 1.5% of the total sum insured. The policy can be taken in such a way that it can come into force 15 days before the actual marriage date.

In case of cancellation or postponement of the wedding, the insurance will cover all non refundable expenses such as travel bookings, accommodation arrangement in hotels, music arrangement, amount paid to decorators and caterer, advances paid to the marriage hall, and printing of invitation card. The policy also includes loss/damage to received gifts, jewellery, hired sets for the marriage, shamiana and other decorative materials.

It is essential for the insurer to have bills and invoices for all the payments and expenses made related to the marriage to make an insurance claim. The insurer before making any claim should have taken adequate measures to minimise the loss to the properties during such cancellation.

Travel Arrangements for the Destination Weddings & Honeymoon

A normal Indian wedding is always elaborate and continues for at least two days. Some of them even get extended to the third day. Current day weddings especially among the affluent class, while gives preference for the traditional rituals, also provides a sense of participation and relaxation to the participating guests, on all the days. During such weddings,  suitable standby travel arrangements are provided for the ready use of the guests, though, most of them may own a chauffeur driven car.

Destination Wedding
Another interesting aspect that is fast catching up is destination wedding. Such weddings have become more common among affluent business families and in cases where both the bride and groom are well employed. Exotic locations within the country or in an overseas destination have become a norm for such weddings. All the invited guests are extended with to-and- fro travel arrangement from their own places or from a common place.

For the chosen locations within India, inorder to offer travel comfort to the guests’, luxury busses or cars are arranged. Depending of the arranged destination air/train travel advance bookings are made. Some of the Indian locations that are well-known for destination wedding include Rajasthan, Goa and Kerala.
For the weddings that are planned in some of the most preferred overseas countries such as Thailand, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Caribbean, Maldives, Seychelles and Fiji, air travel and local transportation arrangements are made. Invited guests are informed in advance about such wedding to know their availability to arrange visas and complete other travel formalities.

Honeymoon
Honeymoon is the first real occasion for the couple to be all alone and on their own. A perfect honeymoon is possible only with a flawless planning. A clear understanding between the couple, about the choice of place, makes the honeymoon days happy and fruitful. Most of the time, it is the allocated budget that decides the national or international destination for a honeymoon. It is essential for the couples to refrain from allowing their individual tastes to dominate the honeymoon location choice. Intelligent couples try to have a few best locations as their choice to narrow down the choice and finally select a common place of interest.

Role of wedding planners
Making travel arrangements during the wedding, conducting destination weddings in India as well in a foreign country and providing tailor made honeymoon packages have become a part of the wedding planning services. In addition to making arrangements for wedding, most of the corporate wedding planning companies are equipped to make flawless travel arrangements. The adequate knowledge and experience in arranging such packages and the proximity to travel service providers allows the corporate wedding planning companies to make perfect arrangements.

The parents on their part find it convenient to deal with a single source ie. the wedding planner to make all the local and international travel, air/train ticket booking, completing visa formalities and boarding and lodging arrangements needed for all the occasions.

Photo and Video Arrangement for a Marriage

Marriage is one occasion that draws the largest participation of relatives and friends alike. Their participation makes a special marriage occasion into a memorable one. The services of a professional photographer and a videographer help you to capture the unforgettable marriage moments that can never be recreated. The captured moments serve you in treasuring such memories for a life time.

Unlike the earlier days, the video and photo arrangements for a marriage are not confined to just shooting of the marriage events. They go beyond that occasion, to capture the everyday life of the bride and groom, in their very own special surroundings with friends and relatives. The video shoot even goes to a step further and pictures the school, college and working place environs gracefully and include the comments of friends and relatives.

Current day wedding video and photo capturing are no more dull and do not follow the mundane old routine. They no more video or photo capture the marriage function like a documentary. The video and photo arrangements have undergone a total transformation and transition. Every frame of the photo or video passionately captures of the occasion and re-creates it with all liveliness.

The marriage related video and photo shoot starts right from betrothal, starting of the bride and groom for the marriage hall, their entry into the hall, various arrangements in the hall and every single event of the marriage. The occasions, such as bridal shower, mehendi ceremony and sangeet are also included the photo and video coverage. The coverage even describe the intimate moments such as emotion, humor and love displayed during the marriage proceedings without fail. The captured emotional and intimate moments are imaginatively edited and included in the wedding video and photo presentation.

At present the movie style video presentation is in vogue and it is catching every one’s attention. The entire wedding event is videographed in sequence using a number of cameras, edited for crisp presentation and included with apt sound track to add value. Candid photo and video shoots have become regular during the marriages to capture the unexpected and finer moments for inclusion in the album.

Pre-wedding photo and videography is no more a taboo. Photographers use the digital cameras to follow and capture every movement of the couples right from the day one and all the time during the marriage to seize the special unexpected moments in film as they unfold.

It is vital for one to exercise utmost care in selecting the photo and videographers for the marriage. It becomes essential to cross check their experience and earlier work execution with provided samples and by interacting with those who have hired them in the past. Always select someone who will listen to your requirements and exceed your expectations.

Finally before signing a contract discuss the terms of package to understand the type and the number of cameras used to cover the function, various lighting options, and the video and audio quality specifications.  Also, get to know the number of DVD and photo albums included in the package and the cost for extra orders.