The Perfect Ingredients To A Pakistani Wedding

Every girl grows up imagining her perfect wedding. No matter where you reside, no matter what the culture, it is this innate reverie embedded in every girl’s biological make up. So I was wondering, what are the ingredients to the perfect wedding?

For starters, to have a groom present! 



Much like you choose the perfect fat chicken at the grocers, you must find your chicken (groom) before the wedding. The minute a girl turns the ripe age of 18, a switch flips in her parents’ brains (no matter how liberal, they are all thinking it), and they unconsciously/consciously begin eyeing eligible boys for their little princess. All the while without realising, their little princess is doing the same.

This therefore brings us to the age old debate of the arranged marriage vs the love marriage. For those lucky few who meet their mates in the pages of a beautiful love story, which they later proudly tell their children and grandchildren about, it’s quite simple. But for the rest of the commoners, it means countless cringe-worthy tea parties, small-talk, and exercise of the cheek muscles from all that fake smiling. Not to mention the ever growing portfolio of mama’s-boys eyeing you from across the room with cheesy smiles, leaving you feeling like Cream Puffs on elaborate display on a bakery window.



Once the groom is in, next step is all about ‘Location, Location, Location’. With a vast abundance of wedding halls this step has been made relatively easier. You pay and they make all the arrangements, but being classic Pakistani businesses, you will find negligent slipshod methods at play. The only cutlery you find at a wedding like this is a spoon; I ask, how is one supposed to eat chicken tikka, with a spoon? Not to mention chairs that have been colour coded to match the walls in a toddler’s nursery and table centre pieces that consist of a jar with a single stem red rose.. How romantic!

“If music be the food of love, play on.”  

But if that music is a grumpy old man on a piano-one that does not take requests-and plays mostly his own rendition of ‘careless whisper’, do you really want him to play on?!

Just for once I would like to hear some classic soothing jazz, which does not come off as cheesy. But then without the cheesy backdrop music, what would soundtrack the sappy speeches?

Another fad that has caught on like wildfire, is where members of the family hog the microphone for longer than they should, in an attempt to tell inside jokes, (that only the family understands) and teary renditions of congratulatory speeches, complete with goody bad bouquets. Now imagine all that with game-show music in the back every time a family member came up on stage to receive their bouquet.

Weddings rarely go exactly as you’d expect them to, but for every girl who has ever imagined her fairytale wedding, it is the happiest day of her life. And what better way to start a brand new chapter in your life than with a bang! That is exactly what one family thought they would do, when they decided to make their grand entrance on the back of horse-drawn carriages. A beautiful sight to see, as the majestic carriages, adorned in colourful flowers, pulled into the venue and beautiful girls with their long flowing dresses and parlour-perfect hair dismounted. What they did not anticipate were the fireworks display scaring the poor horses into frenzy and ending in quite a ‘messy’ and chaotic situation.

Word to the wise, if you try to top that and settle for a Mughal-theme wedding, complete with the wedding party entering on elephants, think again!



If it were my wedding, I would want there to be utter chaos, to derive the maximum fun out of an occasion which otherwise is expected to be completely boring and civilized. After all, don’t you want to remember this day for the rest of your life.. Something to tell the grandchildren about?