There is something uniquely electric about the moment a wedding is announced. It triggers a frenzy of plans; Pinterest boards, WhatsApp groups, vendor calls, Excel sheets, outfit trials, family negotiations, and never-ending conversations about colour palettes, mehndi songs, or the correct shade of marigold. In Indian weddings, especially, the planning starts to feel like a marathon sprint; an emotional and logistical upheaval that builds up to one climactic day. But in the pursuit of a “perfect wedding”, we often lose sight of something far more enduring: the life that begins after the last diya has extinguished, the makeup is wiped off, the guests have left, and the photographer has packed up.
This is not anti-wedding; instead, it is a meditation on why so much of our collective energy is invested in a single spectacular day, and why we spend comparatively little time planning for the marriage that follows. Because in truth, what you’re really doing is not planning a wedding but planning a life.
The great distraction
Weddings, by their very nature, are performances. They are cultural spectacles, rooted in tradition and emotion, designed to signal commitment, continuity, and celebration. But somewhere along the way, they have also become increasingly commodified: an industry in which love often takes a backseat to logistics, budgets, trends, and visual perfection. Ask most couples, and they’ll tell you their wedding planning involved at least one of the following: a fight about seating arrangements, a meltdown over food tastings, disagreements on photography style, or family drama about who wears what. These aren’t petty concerns; they reflect real tensions. Alas, they also hint at a greater irony: in planning the first day of the rest of your life, couples often stop communicating meaningfully about that life itself.
We get so consumed by choosing the right song for the bridal entry that we forget to talk about how we’ll enter parenthood or whether we even want to. We obsess over matching lehengas and sherwanis but skirt around the question of how we’ll manage finances. We coordinate dances with friends but never rehearse the conversations we’ll need when things get hard. The wedding becomes the centrepiece and the marriage, an afterthought.
The unasked questions
What if wedding planning began with a different kind of checklist? Not a list of venues, caterers, and jewellery vendors but a set of conversations that every couple should have before saying “I do.” Conversations about how each partner defines success, what intimacy means to them, how they handle conflict, what they fear, how they view religion, ageing parents, ambition, mental health, and solitude. What if, amid the rush of haldi and sangeet rehearsals, there was also space for quiet dialogue? To ask: What do you need when you’re hurting? How do you want to be loved when you’re not your best self? What does forgiveness look like for you?
No one will Instagram these moments, but they are the moments that matter. Because marriage is not the highlight reel of a wedding, it is, instead, a series of unscripted, unrehearsed, deeply human acts of showing up. Again and again. And the truth is these conversations can be uncomfortable. They don’t often yield neat answers, but asking them is an act of love. It means you’re planning not just for joy but for reality.
Intimacy beyond ceremonies
Many modern couples today are living together before marriage. Others are choosing long-distance partnerships, second marriages, or even open relationships. The idea of what constitutes a “successful marriage” is expanding, evolving, and rightfully so. And yet, wedding planning often remains strangely archaic: a parade of rituals and relatives, sometimes disconnected from the couple’s actual values or desires. A woman who wears a nose ring and works at a start-up might be forced into the same bridal script her grandmother followed. A man who cries easily might feel pressure to be “stoic” in wedding photos.
The weight of tradition can be beautiful, but it can also be heavy. For many, weddings become a performance of belonging, fitting into expectations of caste, culture, class, gender roles, even when these scripts no longer serve their lives. Weddings are about family, yes. But marriage is about chosen family. And in that sense, planning for forever requires more than choosing décor, it requires shedding expectations, rewriting norms, and designing a life that reflects who you truly are.
Why the “after” matters more
The morning after the wedding is often underwhelming. You wake up tired, overwhelmed, and vaguely disoriented; the adrenaline crashes; the makeup is smudged; the silence feels strange after the music. And suddenly it hits you: the wedding is over. What is left is a person sleeping beside you and a lifetime of shared mornings ahead. This is when the real planning begins. Planning how you’ll navigate disagreements when they arise (and they will arise). How do you keep curiosity alive in a long-term relationship? How do you balance independence and intimacy? How will you support each other through grief, career shifts, body changes, and the slow, silent erosion of novelty?
Because the truth is, forever is not built in a mandap; it is built in a thousand tiny, invisible moments. In the way one partner brews tea when the other has a cold. In how you touch each other when no one’s watching. In your ability to listen, truly listen, when your partner is hurting, not just fix it. In the willingness to grow not just old, but also up, together. The ceremony ends, but the commitment begins.
Reimagining the rituals
What if we repurposed some of the rituals to reflect this idea of forever? A mehndi ceremony that also includes writing letters to your future selves, five years into marriage. A sangeet where friends share not just dance moves but memories of the couple’s resilience. A wedding website that doesn’t just list events but also includes the couple’s “relationship map”—their values, their fights, their learnings.
What if wedding gifts were experiences that nurture a couple’s future together—therapy sessions, travel funds, creative workshops, books on relationships—instead of silverware? What if the wedding album captured the small, quiet moments, the nervous hand squeezes, the private jokes, and the stolen glances as much as the fireworks and twirls? And what if we normalised couples seeking premarital counselling, not as a sign of problems, but as preparation for partnership? Just as we hire stylists and photographers, why not mentors and therapists? It’s not about stripping the celebration of joy. It’s about deepening its meaning.
We have perfected the art of wedding planning. We know how to plan a party, a menu, and a production, but forever is not a production; it is a process. A quiet, long, deeply personal journey that deserves just as much attention, reflection, and intention. If you’re planning a wedding, pause and ask yourselves, “Are we planning for a day, or are we planning for life?”
Because after the last song plays and the final confetti settles, the only thing that remains is the love you’ve built. And that messy, honest, patient, evolving love is the most beautiful thing you’ll ever wear.
