Food Everywhere!

It’s official: the buffet has hit Indian weddings.

Tomorrow is the actual wedding of a good family friend’s daughter, but tonight, they held the reception. (Apparently it is becoming very common to hold wedding receptions for people before they are actually married – which is a great idea if you’re planning on pulling a Runaway Bride, because then you get all your presents first, haha)

Anyway, the wedding reception turned out to be quite fun! The flowers and decorations in the hall were gorgeous, and the Srinath’s had finally arrived in Bangalore, so I had someone to talk to. Eventually, we made our way through the line, wished the happy pseudo-couple well, and then headed downstairs to the dinner area.

The room was decorated with various edible arrangements; there were tons of fruit flowers and a Tabla made out of squash and a huge alligator made out of bittergourd. (I never really know if I’m calling these vegetables by their proper English names, but just know that it all looked really cool.)

The dinner was even better than the decorations.

Instead of the traditional banana-leaf feast, the caterers had set the room up in a buffet style. There were stalls around the room with different food items. Between a soup station, a chaat station, a North Indian station and a South Indian station, a fruit station and a dessert station, the amount of food was overwhelming.

Not so overwhelmed that I didn’t visit all the stations, of course. As much as I am a fan of banana-leaf fare, I could definitely get used to this buffet style meal.

-June 23rd