Gifts in cash, customised food trucks and other greatest hits from our millennial wedding guide

There’s no going back

The last time I was on auto-pilot was when I was scheduling 30 tweets on Tweetdeck at work. Shorten the link, add caption and image, share and repeat. Right now, I am preparing for yet another auto-pilot journey scheduled to begin next week: the Big, Fat, Indian wedding season. I already have four to attend. I’m not stressed anymore though. The same food, the identical sangeet steps and the similar categories of people: grumpy uncles chasing free daaru, same uncles burning the dance floor after four Patiala pegs and aunties more concerned about your relationship status than your parents are.

Like Veere Di Wedding brought alive on the big screen, they’re all as boisterous as a fish market at sunrise. And thanks to Karan Johar, even the otherwise boring Bengali wedding now demands a sangeet. Sadly, the playlist is still stuck on Rabindrasangeet.

But what if all this could change? After all, our parents have moved from landlines to smartphones and are more active in Whatsapp groups than we ever were. So while finalising the fifth sari for the third function at the fourth wedding, I sort of had a brain wave. Let’s add a millennial filter to the existing Indian wedding structure. Ditch underwhelming buffets and running in circles around the fire. No more shehnaais or gifts in the form of ashirwaad.

Truth bomb: millennials need cash more than the blessings because wishes don’t count as downpayment and can’t be passed on to your landlord at the end of the month. That’s how the idea of the fantasy millennial wedding was born. And I’ll continue selling this idea to every other couple until this becomes the new, woke mainstream.

Kindly transfer cash:

Remember Shruti Kakkar’s business insight in Band Baaja Baaraat? “Recession ho ya inflation, shaadiyan toh hoti rahengi, aur log unpe laakhon kharchte rahenge.” Yes, weddings are money-making machines for everybody involved — catering wale Sharmaji, DJ wale Babu and Agarwal halwai — except for the couple #BreadPakodeKiKasam. 

Here, we don’t need the gaudily wrapped Prestige pressure cooker or crockery sets from Corelle. Kindly transfer the gift in cash via Google Pay or PayTM at the venue. Please do the needful before you head to the food truck and definitely before you get sloshed at the open bar. The credit card machine will be installed at the entrance. Just tap.

Commence the food coma:

Ah, good riddance to all the matar paneer with no paneer and ‘veg biryani’ forever. At the fantasy millennial wedding, there’s no cutting lines at the buffet queue. You don’t have to discreetly race to reach the rasgulla counter before Banerjee Da has gobbled up the dozen left. Save time, download the wedding app, browse the food trucks available: Vegan, Kosher, Keto, Chindian, Mughlai, there’s something for all diets. Place your order. This way, you don’t need to make small talk at the buffet line, and also have more time to get wasted. 

Raise a roast:

Mixed with alcohol and other maal, most toasts become the kind of embarrassing improv nobody asked for. Couples don’t need a slurred anthology of other revelations that were meant to be secrets forever. At fantasy millennial weddings, we don’t do toasts; we are all for no-holds-barred roasts. And it ends with the couple roasting all the guests. This way, they can get away with finally telling extended relatives exactly what they think, since they’ll never see them again anyway.

Free us from pheras:

We didn’t start the fire, so why should we casually stroll around it melting our 20k worth of makeup off? Ask politely and Panditji will even accelerate the marathon into a sprint. 

Instead, we live stream the prayers at the wedding venue. The couple can go about schmoozing with the guests — familiar and alien. Armed with bluetooth headsets, the couple will respond to the mantras every now and then. And most importantly, there will be no budget-destroying mogras or white lilies decorating the pandal, just Instagram flower filters.

And for bidaai, where the bride is supposed to cry like the world is about to end, we ban the whole concept of phoot-phoot ke rona. Just hire men who cry passionately on TikTok to cry on behalf of the bride. Anything to keep that makeup intact.