Home Wedding Decoration

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Prasanna and Santhana put up traditional decorations in their yard which announced to the neighborhood that an auspicious event was taking place in their home. (I'm not sure, but I don't think it's specific just to weddings, but to any "auspicious" event.)

Side note: "Auspicious" is not really a word that I'm particularly familiar with, but it's used often in India. Looking it up in my thesaurus (after using the spell checker), I find that it means: favorable, positive, promising, fortunate, propitious, lucky and good.

There was a canopy of woven banana leaves that covered over not only the entrance to the yard, but the whole yard. (you can’t tell this from the photo, only the part over the gate is visible). At the two sides of the gate there were two full sized banana trees that had been cut down and brought in. Both had green bananas still on them. (These are those small little bananas that I fell in love with.) The trees bent at the tops to form an arch when they joined. That in itself seems sort of symbolic of a marriage, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to represent that. (There is sooo much that I’m not sure of.) I DO know that the banana tree, flower and fruit have a lot of signifiance in Southern India. The trunks of the trees were wrapped in woven banana leaves. Right under the canopy, over the gate, hung other parts of the banana tree including the tassel like flower that comes before the bananas are formed.

OOPPS Here is the correction on those tassels:

The green and the beige coloured tassel are the tender and grown up flowers of the coconut trees. If you could have close look at these flowers you would find hundreds of infanct coconuts bunched on each string. When they mature in to full blown ones as you see just above and to the left of the banana bunch, only few survives, others fall off. (Thanks, Sandhya)

The whole thing was beautiful and exotic looking, especially at night when the lights were turned on.

Friends and family, please feel free to correct me on the specifics of any of this!

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Photos

Yard Decoration
Here is the view that greeted people from the street as they passed by (or arrived at) Prasanna and Santhana's home. This was put up a few days before the wedding and left up a few days after. The man in the "skirt" works for Praveen's parents around their home. The other man is their regular (full time) driver.

Close Up
Close up of the banana and coconut arrangement that was on each side of the shelter. The bananas are still attached to the trees. You can see the large purple "flower" (bud?) that is at the tip of the cluster of bananas.

Close Up
(I think that:) the beige colored tassel is part of the banana flower that has been dried before maturity. I'm not sure what the other things are that hang on both sides of it, but I saw them used in other places around the country as decoration and I'm sure they have significance. My guess is that they are also part of either the banana or coconut tree.

Close Up
(I think I was told that:) this green tassel is the first stage of the banana flower and that the banana fruit is later formed from these.

Close Up
Banana leaves are split and woven around the trunks of the two trees. A similiar technique makes the roof of the shelter.

Night Lights
Ruth and Prasanna stand out front.

Comments

[santhana]

the green tassel
The green and the beige coloured tassel are the tender and grown up flowers of the coconut trees. If you could have close look at these flowers you would find hundreds of infanct coconuts bunched on each string. When they mature in to full blown ones as you see just above and to the left of the banana bunch, only few survives, others fall off.

[shailen]

nice journal
interesting journal .. congratulations to ur daughter n son in law. in one of ur pics u have mentioned the roof n shelter of banana leaves .. i think they are coconut leaves. :) nice journal got hooked to it for a long time... back to studies.:)