Catholic & Hindu ceremony on the same day

Hello Cynthia and welcome!

My fiance and I attended an Indian/Christian ceremony last summer that was great! Our friends chose a museum for their venue and they did the following:

First, the Baraat; it's the ceremony where the groom is brought in on horseback and there's lots of music/celebrating/dancing.

Then, the [abbreviated] Indian ceremony, complete with a program that explained everything that was going on - the bride is Christian, but wore Indian garb and followed traditional customs with her groom

Then there was a break with Indian appetizers while the Indian ceremony space was turned into a Christian ceremony space.

After the break, we all went into the Christian ceremony, both bride and groom changed into traditional bridal clothes, and there were new programs laid out.

After the Christian ceremony, there was a cocktail hour while the ceremony space was transformed into the reception space.

It was a lot of fun to see both customs joined together!! Best of luck!!

To continue with more detail:

It was very neat to see the Indian ceremony first, followed by the traditional Christian ceremony. It kind of set the tone for the evening because the bride was able to keep her traditional white gown on for the rest of the evening, rather than the Indian garb she wore for the first ceremony.

Between the ceremonies, we were able to tour the museum to keep us occupied and the snacks were a great touch. Like I said, in between the Indian and Christian ceremony, they served Indian snacks but then between the Christian ceremony and the reception, they served American snacks with a few Indian snacks mixed in. It was a really nice way to join the two cultures together without making you feel like you had to choose "which was better".

If it were me, I would conduct the Hindu ceremony first and then your Catholic ceremony; that way, you can enjoy wearing your gown all evening!

Also...The timeline...

(I'm going off of roughly what I remember - the entire day was roughly 12-13 hours long but we were more than happy to share the entire day with them!)

The Baraat started at 1:00 pm

The Indian Ceremony began at 2:00 pm

Indian Appetizer break between ceremonies at 3:30 pm

Christian Ceremony began at 4:30 pm

Cocktail hour began around 5:00 pm

Reception started around 6:30-7:00 pm and went until around 1:00 am

It was a great day!!

That sounds similar to what I was thinking in my head in terms of timeline! I like the idea of having snacks too!

Cynthia, I'd suggest you find out/decide exactly which Hindu traditions will be in your wedding to inform the decision-making about the order of events. If you want MIL/FIL input, ask for that and discuss to come to some agreements between your FH and yourself.

Some of the possible ceremony traditions will involve ruining/messing up your hairstyle for the day and will stain your garments and/or skin with spices. This is part of why the two-day Indian wedding works well; the smushing of jaggery into each other's heads, the subsequent putting of spices and rice on your heads by all guests, etc. happen one day and on the other day you get to look pretty and put-together enough for pictures all the way through.

DH and I ended up needing to do an India wedding and a U.S. wedding, so while I initially had a lot of questions like yours, some of them went by the wayside. We did blend food traditions, though, in our U.S. wedding.

PM me if you want to discuss how to blend it all together.

I have been the "official" officiant for a number of weddings that included Hindu weddings, which are lovely.

I think it is really important for each officiant to know that there are going to be two ceremonies so they can construct ceremonies of appropriate lengths. I was the second ceremony after a four hour Indian ceremony a few years ago, and I can tell you that absolutely no one in that room wanted to hear a word I said.

Do the Hindu ceremony first, have a break, and let everyone know the entire schedule. It's beautiful and interesting, but not everyone will choose to come.

Thanks for the additional thoughts... We have talked to the Hindu priest and will be doing a very abbreviated, 1 - 1.5 hour ceremony. We will be having the full Hindu ceremony in India at some point in the future, which his mother and father are arranging.

This sounds interesting. I would like to attend your wedding

Woah I just read an article about a catholic/hindu wedding. lol right on time

http://munaluchibridal.com/hindu-and-catholic-wedding-in-texas-by-nicole-ryan-photography-natasha-john/

They said: "We started with a traditional Hindu ceremony and after a quick costume change (with some French macarons and lemonade for the guests) we were able to conclude with a Catholic ceremony. "

Thanks so much for the article PurpleSun!

I'm in the same boat. We are just beginning to sort the logistics. Similar to you, we are going to have one ceremony in India, however we want to have one day in Canada that includes both ceremonies. I considered hiring a planner to help sort the details however there are few planners in my city that have experience in this situation. Cynthia, as you find resources, can you please share!

This is all great information. I wish I had an answer for you but as I read through your feed of replies, a question came up for me which I hope you can help me with. My fiancee is Catholic and my parents mentioned the idea of getting married in India however my fiancee's father and mother will more than likely not attend. Does anyone know if her father is required to attend because if he really is as my parents claim, then that option is off the table for us. Her brother and sister are excited about making the trip though. I was hoping her brother could be the one to give her away. Thank you!

Hi Ashish and Helen,

Things changed very quickly in our planning from my original post. We are now having 3 weddings, which seemed crazy at first, but now makes the most sense for us. I was getting really frustrated with all the rules and regulations of the Catholic ceremony and trying to get it to fit with our bi-cultural and bi-religious wedding. In addition to that, we decided for numerous reasons, to separate everything out. We are doing a small, private Catholic ceremony with my parents and sisters. Then we will do our ceremony in India in the Spring (we think, it might wind up being in two years). But for the day we already have $$ on, we are going to design our own ceremony that blends our two cultures. Since we will already be married and will have satisfied the religious rites of both families, we can now express ourselves how we want to, and then move into our reception

Also, to answer your other question - the father does not need to be present in a Catholic ceremony.

You do need to have two 'Christian' witnesses though, if it is your first wedding according to my deacon. Which is another reason we needed to change things up, because my FH couldn't have his brother as the best man if we did a Catholic ceremony as our primary. It didn't seem right.

Hi everyone, I know this post is a bit old but I'm wondering if those brides who had the two ceremonies on the same day could give me some input on how you took photos with families & bridal party for each ceremony. Also, did you feel rushed & nervous about making it on time for each ceremony? I don't want to feel like I have to rush through any part of my wedding, and so I'm thinking about doing the Hindu ceremony in the morning followed by a lunch and then the Western one in the afternoon. Thoughts?

Hello ladies,

I'm very excited and nervous about all this. His parents are coming to visit this summer and our engagement will take place at that time. Our current plan is to have a Catholic Wedding here in the US for my family and in a year or so another wedding in India. In despite of my best effort to avoid the Indian wedding I know the importance for him and had to give in. His mother will be in charge of the preparations there if she is willing to. How has your experience being with the mother in law? Do they take offence if you try to help in your own wedding?

Hi Odarely,

From the time I posted this discussion through today, our whole wedding plan has changed multiple times. Because of some visa issues, my husband and I moved our official wedding date up from Sept. 2014 to Sept. 2013. We were going to do a very quiet courthouse wedding and move forward with our wedding this September without telling anyone but our parents. At the same time we started the wedding planning process with the Catholic church, which takes 8-12 months in Colorado. We did tell the Deacon about our situation when we started marriage prep and the Catholic church basically freaked out that we would be doing a JOP wedding first. We explained it was because of timing and the visa issue and did they get us through marriage prep in the blink of an eye! So we actually did a very small Catholic wedding with just my immediate family and the deacon.

In Feb. my work sent me to India and my husband and I discussed doing our Hindu wedding at that time as well. We talked to his parents and they did all the planning for us. I could not have been more thankful for everything they arranged for us. My MIL bought me two saris (one for ceremony and one for reception). His uncle found the venue and his brother picked out the invites. We had several hundred people attend and with all the cultural customs involved, I wouldn't have known how to plan for any of it. Looking back, if I knew certain things, I might have done them differently, but this wedding wasn't really my wedding. I was thrilled to be a part of it and share that experience with my husband and his family, but since this wedding wasn't my dream, it was more important to let him and his family develop the vision for their dream wedding for their son. So I had to let go of my type A personality and just be in the moment. Why do you want to avoid the Indian wedding? And it was actually intriguing to me to compare my Catholic roots with my Hindu wedding. Things like incense and water play a huge role in both religions. And just witnessing the concept of what tying the knot really means in the Hindu tradition or how the ring warming ceremony we do here is commonplace with the wedding jewelry there.

To answer your question about my MIL, she was so nice and sweet she had my sari blouse fixed multiple times (because the sizes I sent her didn't translate right) and we bought new bangles because my wrists were too big but I never felt judged. People were curious about me and us, but once they met me and saw us together they were happy for us. Every family is different, but just be open and be yourself, but also remember a bit of modesty while in India. I think if at anytime I would have said that I wanted to change anything, his family would have jumped and done it. There were more worried about making sure I was happy and comfortable. But I am sure it would have made them sad to question the decisions they made, based on their lifetime of experience with that religion and culture.

I hope that you will be able to embrace the experience. An Indian wedding is a lot of work, but it will bring the two of you closer and more importantly bond you with his family.

My husband and I still have ONE more wedding to plan. Since we already had the ball rolling for this Sept. and we have not celebrated with most of our friends and family, we decided to move forward and plan a bi-cultural ceremony all at the same time. We figure we have done the Catholic piece and the Hindu piece, but now we get to show off who we are as a couple and how our future together will be. This magical blend and we get to share elements of the Indian ceremony with our American friends. I can't wait!

Sorry for the long comment. I am happy to share more with you about my Indian wedding experience, stories, photos etc. Also note, that my husband is from South India, which is a very different culture than other regions of India, so your family and wedding could be very different than what I experienced.

Really! This a best place to share over moments to the community.Am a Hindu person.Before our wedding we first pray to Goddess Lakshmi by chanting mahalakshmi stotram to bless us with good life and fortune and prepare for the wedding.Hindu wedding is one of the best wedding and all the family members,cousins,brothers,sisters etc will be present at the wedding scene to perform it successful.

Nice mam my wedding is going to place next year February. At our culture we fire offer prayers to Goddess Lakshmi and lord Hanuman chanting hanuman chalisa lyrics with devotion. We make it as a festival throughout the month.