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Now
India-Americans are trying to recreate the
same magic, and Queen is the vital place
in the city for wedding planners. The
borough is home to a plethora of wedding
attire and jewelry stores, Indian sweet
shops, restaurants and caterers, wedding
photographers and videographers.
Little of this existed 10 years ago, when
Rita's older sister Rekha got married.
"We were the first young generation
to get married here because our parents
came married from India," recalls
about her wedding to Miten Patel in New
Jersey.
Most Indian weddings involve 400 to 800
guests and in the days of Rekha's wedding
the mainstream catering places did not
permit outside catering could not provide
Indian cuisine. Rekha had her wedding in a
hall attached to a fire department in
South Jersey and catered the food from an
Indian restaurant. She adds,
"Nowadays you can walk into any
catering place and everyone knows how
Indian weddings work." 
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Now,
a decade later, that vendor, Mitesh
Patel, owns House of
Dipali, a
7,000-square-foot showroom in
Bellerose that has 10,000 statues, 13
types of mandaps and thousands of
invitation cards.
Patel, whose showroom is
a virtual treasure trove, says:
"Sometimes we do five weddings on
a weekend. The market is increasing 30
to 40 percent every year. According to
my estimate, there are a minimum of 20
weddings a week in the tri-state
area."
Even in
those days, everything was easier to
find in Queens - and a special trip to
New York had to be made by people from
surrounding states if they needed
paraphernalia for the wedding. Rekha
recalls that her family had to pick up
the mandap for the wedding right from
the vendor's home.
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 Indeed,
in a new country, many immigrants are
mixing old traditions and creating new
ones, borrowing from mainstream
culture. Bridal registries do not
exist in India, where gold is the
traditional wedding gift, but
Indian-American brides are
enthusiastically embracing the
concept. Jokes Rita, "If you just
go on Macy's bridal registry Web site
and key in 'Patel', you'll get 20,000
listings, I'm sure!"
Gujarati
couples in India do not exchange
wedding rings, but the practice is
becoming common in the United States.
Rita was not only presented the
traditional wedding necklace, or
mangalsutra, by Ketan, but the couple
also exchanged wedding rings. Flower
girls also have been adapted into the
Indian wedding scenario. As Rekha
points out: "Everyone has those
cute little girls in their family and
this gives them a role. Everyone
should have a role in a wedding,
right?"
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people are learning to take the best
of all cultures: Rita and Ketan had
more than a hundred non-Indian guests
at their wedding.
"When
it came to dancing the Raas
Garba," Rita said, "we gave
out the dandias, or sticks, as a token
to all our friends. Ten minutes'
training, and after that they all
lined up with their partners and
participated. It was tremendous to
watch! They are so into learning about
our culture-it's great!"
Lavina
Melwani is a freelance writer.
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