Let the celebrations begin

TELLY VISION

Planning weddings is like making films, anyway. It's the same thing, another pre-production." American film director Debbie Issit, who recently made the film Confetti, a "mocumentary" capturing the chaos of modern-day weddings, made this crackling remark in one of her interviews.

Debbie's film is tasting a fair share of success; perhaps a lot better than what most marriages are facing today in the long run.

While Debbie captured the mayhem that precedes the actual event, on Discovery Travel & Living, wedding planner Vandana Mohan was whining: "There's just nothing I can do," she cried, "a mirror has crashed and the fabric is all torn."

Mohan was the wedding planner for Vikram Chatwal-Priya Sachdev's wedding, one of the most talked about Indian shaadis in recent times.

The entire wedding tamasha was aired last week as an hourlong documentary called The Great Indian Wedding, produced by Blue Mango Films, which captured all the confusion accompanying the grand celebration.

With this episode, the channel announced its search for exotic and unique Indian weddings by inviting entries for a 13-part special series that will start early next year.

In October, my dates are reserved for a traditional Zulu wedding where a couple, after eight years of living together and managing three children along with 11 cows, will finally marry each other.

This is courtesy National Geographic Channel, which will also showcase a "trendy Johannesburg wedding" where cameras will focus on an ambitious couple who have to make it to the church and the airport quickly.

Will they, won't they? I have to wait and watch. The channel is also showing another interesting episode by following two same-sex couples and will show the families' reactions, the baulking of the community and the grand finale.

While Indian television may take a while before producing programmes with such radical content, in Hindi serials marriages are getting very close to reality. Packaged in "special" episodes are designer trousseau, exotic sets and lavish celebrations.

Recently, Sony, in one of its prime-time serials, showcased an episode of the marriage of the protagonist and spent many lakhs on the nuptial episode alone. I remember being told that on Zee's Saat Phere, the wedding episode alone cost around Rs 15 lakh.

The Indian craze for weddings on the small screen, as far as I remember, was years ago when Madhuri Dixit made her debut on TV. A pre-shaadi.com era reality show, it bought together families who interacted with Dixit while she tried to play matchmaker. The prospective couple sat on an uncomfortable jhoola and exchanged inane questions.

The programme flopped as expected and I suspect boys must have begged their mommas to get them married off to Madhuri instead. That was then.

With the advent of the reality genre on telly, more recently a television reporter from an Indian electronic media channel covered her own wedding. She cried into the camera, showed off her pretty mehndi hands, got the cameras to zoom in during the haldi, sangeet, jaimala and finally the vidai ceremony.

In fact, sometimes couples are just born to provide fodder for reality TV. Look at Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich, a couple who fell in love on the sets of Survivor, completed another adventure reality show called Amazing Race, and will finally allow a channel to air their marriage and follow them as they shop, fight, kiss and make up, and fight again.
Phew.

Love them for the grandiose moments and wonder about all the brouhaha in the long run "" the telly is a great junction for the shaadi journey.