Please consider this as a personal invitation.

“Hi ra, I am going to Hyderabad next week”

“Oh, whose marriage?”

“Rambabu’s marriage ra”

See that conversation? These days pretty much all conversations revolve around marriage, and it is taken for granted that if you are going someplace else, it is to attend a friend’s wedding, or worse, your own wedding. You can’t escape the endemic. If you happen to miss the wedding, your facebook wall will be flooded with real time updates of the same. If not that, there is always your friendly neighbourhood “photographer” who goes to cover every wedding in the town. Getting on to the internet or checking text messages these days is akin to stepping on a land mine. Every other notification is somebody’s relationship status update, or a wedding date announcement.

This is how it all starts.

Guy meets girl. Girl meets guy. Decide to get married.

The boy, after countless (fake) relationship status updates about imaginary girlfriends is finally thrilled to announce to the world that he is actually getting married. Changes status right away. A dozen “congos” and “whoz d lucky gurl ha???” later things settle down for a while.

Then comes the engagement. Cue for girl to change her profile AND cover picture to a picture of a ring or hand in hand pictures. Or better still, a bokeh shot of the ring.

Enter the photographer.

This is where things go from bad to worse. Sudden deluge of pictures starts.

“Couple shots” or pictures in the following style start appearing:

<candid>

1. Looking at infinity

2. Pointing at infinity

3. Laughing at the coconut tree

4. Looking into each other almost as if they are using each other’s eyes as rear view mirrors.

5. Fake kissing each other

6. Hand in hand

7. Silhouettes of them at sunset/sunrise

8. Pictures of foot

9. Dressing up in front of a mirror

</candid>

and so on.

Since everybody looks the same in these pictures, I wonder what is the need to go for a new photoshoot at all. Just copy someone else’s photos if you want pictures of foot, footprints and you in some obscure corner of the frame no? What only ra babu. These photographer types are to be blamed. What with the easy availability of cameras and gear, and with everyone getting married like there is no tomorrow, a whole new industry of wedding photographers has come on into existence.

On that note, is there a study which shows how facebook has resulted in a spike in camera sales, which in turn has resulted in a spike in the number of photography pages on facebook, which in turn led to an increase in marriages only to be featured on these pages? It’s a vicious cycle ra babu. These weddings have spawned a whole new industry of these bloody wedding photographers.

With the big day not too far away, there is activity all over. Facebook events are made, wedding invites are sent with all the recipients kept in CC, and some dudes doing a “reply all” to those invites.

A sample invite email reads something like this –

“Life takes you to strange places at times. From godforsaken and downtrodden places like Bombay Airport to a place filled with colour and life like a Kalyana Mandapam. In a bizzarre coincidence, I happened to meet the love of my life, and my soul mate just 3 weeks before my marriage. We’re getting married in that Kalyana Mandapam near the Girls Hostel in Ramnagar. Please consider this as a personal invitation from me and grace the occasion”

There was one time when a friend of mine responded to one such mail by saying “Please consider this as my personal wedding gift” and attached a scanned copy of a Rs 1000 note.

Just in case you happen to miss the fact that they are getting married, a countdown till the D-Day is done through status messages, and in some cases pictures too.

Weddings are fun, actually. You get to eat awesome food, see pretty people (never happened in my case, though), meet long lost friends who then announce that they are getting married the next month, BTW. There are so many photographers at weddings these days, that I am willing to believe couples live their paparazzi dream through their own wedding. Pretty sure they send out special invites to all their friends who own an SLR.

Protip: If at the reception or the baraat, someone forces you to dance, snatch the nearest camera you see and tell them you’re taking photographs. They’ll leave you alone. Always works. Or better still, just keep a camera with you at all times.

You’d think now that they are married, it’s all good and back to normal. But no.

A picture of the girl in her bridal outfit and holding a coconut, or a hand with mehendi surfaces. A few days later, an album called “Us :)” appears with pictures of the married couple. Few more weeks, and pictures from their honeymoon at an exotic location appear.

And to top it all, even Google+ is flooded with post wedding photos now. Sigh.

Anyway, when is your marriage?