I’ve finally attended a wedding reception at Palace Grounds. Growing up in Bangalore, it was a known thing that if anyone gott married there, they must be very well off and it was definitely going to be a big affair! A friend of ours got married earlier this week and the reception was held there. We entered the humungous sheltered stall they had made for the reception party. It was decorated with flowers and colourful ribbons. The 3 sides of this makeshift hall were lined with food. The one side in the front was of course the dias for the bride n groom. There were very comfortable chairs put up right in front of the dias for guests to sit. Behind the few rows of this seating, were a lots of dining table and chairs. The table had one accessory:a nice, big white candle in a glass container. (Though I couldn’t understand why that was needed since none of the candle flames were burning due to the fans which on at full speed!). Right next to the dias in one corner was a smaller dias on which a music band were singing all the old and new popular numbers from Hindi and Kannada cinema. The only thing missing was a dance floor (and I think this was due to the fact that the reception was hosted by a south indian family, dances are not so  big here)

 As we entered, we were served with a welcome drink (choice of fresh sugarcane, pineapple, bottled tender coconut water and a couple of other bottled fruit juices). Along with it some dry fruits and sweets. We saw a popcorn machine with a very busy guy manning it due to the demand! We also saw a set of people sitting in a row with a long table in front of them and chairs on the opposite side for the guests. We went closer to see a tattoo artist, a mehndi artist, a carcature artist, a bangle seller, a magician and a fortune teller! 

Thankfully for us, we did not have to stand through the painpul process of standing in a queue to get up to the dias to wish the couple. We had gone there on time and the girl’s parents had still not arrived, so the couple did not want to ‘ascend’ to the ‘throne’ on the dias without them. So we wished them at the place where they were seated…really lucky for us, ‘coz later we saw the serpentine queue had grown really really long!

We then surveyed the many food counters. This is what we found: a dosa counter which was making about 3 different types of dosas, 6 different chaat counters, veg snacks counter (only fried snacks, but they had yummy sabudana vada with tangy chutney!), taco corner, pasta and pizza stall (I’m not kidding!), a chinese counter, a pulav counter (along with 2 other types of rice), 5 north indian vegetable counters, 3 types of roti stalls, a big salad counter (I counted 6 types), a massive dessert corner, badam milk counter (the guy serving it was dressed in traditional UP attire), a paan stall (with 4 types of paan) near the exit. Whew! Not to forget, a bar which was serving only the best alcohol (Johny Walker for heaven’s sake!). Oh and they were also serving raosted peanuts with alcohol!! And I have to write more about the dessert counter. There were 8 types of north indian sweets (including hot jalebi rabdi), 3 types of pastries, ice cream, a chocolate fountain machine which was making fresh chocolate sauce to pour on sponge cake, roller kulfi (a big roller machine makes the kulfi which gets grated into the cup which is served to the guest, it melts in the mouth, a dessert to die for!), ice gola (they had the original gola machine!), and last but not the least, a choice of 5-6 cut fruits (the only healthy option I could see). 

I was quite overwhelmed about how much variety of food was served. Obviously it was impossible to try and even sample all of it! And to think a few years ago, an Indian wedding would probably just have the cuisine of the region the family hosting the wedding were from. And it would mostly be held in the bride’s house if it was big enough or a marriage hall (without the fancy white tables!). Of course things have changed now and how…Hurray to the great Indian wedding and hurrah to the staggering amount of cuisine choices we have in every region here!