The last one I went to, a big Punjabi wedding in Chandigarh was like that… The groom was one of my closest buddies. Of course, the ceremony didn’t start till around 2am, when both of my friend’s parents were dozing off at various times in the circle right outside the pandit and the couple. The couple’s younger cousins were playing cell phone games with the sound on and running through the whole thing. The videographers kept leaning in between the couple and the pandit and turning on the super-bright spotlight to get close-ups. It was pretty chaotic…

It was a dry week in Haryana for some religious reason, so the night before some of my friend’s uncles had a few bottles in the trunk of a car and we’d have to hastily stash them and our cups into the trunk whenever a police car drove by.