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Lavish & generous: extravagant Asian weddings behind the scenes

8 March 2019

“They’d better not drop me, mum! I will kill them.”
“It’s alright: I’ll get to them before you do...”

Ensuring every detail of your wedding day is perfect is enough to make any bride-to-be feel stressed. So imagine adding the worry of (potentially) being dropped out of the chariot that’s carrying you to your reception.

This was the problem faced by a bride-to-be in Getting Hitched Asian Style, a documentary exploring some of the more lavish Asian weddings.

Will bride Syra pull off her dream Bollywood entrance?

Bride Syra has trouble with her big wedding entrance.

‘Asian weddings begin and end with the food’

The scale of the wedding featured in the programme was clear from the enormous quantities of food getting prepared for the guests.

  • 20 kilos of taka chicken;
  • 500 mini cheeseburgers;
  • 400 samosas;
  • 200 portions of fish and chips

“You could spend £100,000 on decor,” said wedding planner Usman, “but if your food is not good, nobody will remember the decor. The Asian wedding begins and ends with the food.”

Asian weddings meet Western culture

Muna, the doting mother of a groom-to-be, is very hands on in the preparation of her son’s wedding.

She helped Amar practise his entrance walk, gave advice on seating arrangements and even helped sample the high tea.

“Muna’s quite a quirky person,” said one planner. “High tea is a risky decision, but you end up adapting some of their [Western] traditions into the Asian culture.”

Not wanting to leave the more important aspects of her son’s big day to the wedding planners, Muna also set about making the cake. Required to feed 200 guests, its production ended up using a mighty 99 eggs!

Asian pre-wedding traditions

Noreen Khan asks how Prince Harry would have found Asian pre-wedding traditions? (From 2018)

The Wedding Guru

Onkar’s running a wedding and the pressure is on. (From 2018)

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