Malad parishioners help couple walk down the aisle

Till debt do us part: Malad parishioners help couple walk down the aisle

Pay For Wedding Cake, Bride’s Gown & Feast; Move Inspires Others To Opt For Minimal Celebrations
Mumbai: A giddy Sailesh and Anjana exchanged vows at St Jude Church in Malad on October 29, eight years after they had met and fallen in love, surrounded by strangers they had just met but who were giving their all to help the young couple have their dream wedding.

Sailesh, 28, an office-bearer and Anjana, 27 a flight attendant, wanted their big day to be special, memorable and perfect. But the price tag attached to big fat weddings thwarted their desire, and they decided to forego a formal ceremony.
“Expenses for weddings like the ones we’ve attended seem nothing less than Rs 10 lakh —venue, food, cake, clothesbut we did not have that kind of savings,” says Sailesh. “So we abandoned our dream of having a wedding reception,” adds Anjana, when they told Fr Warner D’Souza (priest incharge of St Jude Church, Malad East) they wanted a “simple nuptial on any convenient day”.

But Fr D’Souza had something more in store for them. Almost 500 parishioners indulged in a rare celebration—a community feast combined with putting their heads and hearts together—pooling resources and talent to get Sailesh and Anjana married.

If the nuptial was presided over by the Auxiliary Bishop of Bombay, Fr Barthol Barretto, parishioners took on self-styled roles. If one paid for 30 of the bridal party’s guests, another baked the cake. If someone sewed the bridal entourage’s clothes, another the buttonholes and the bridal bouquet. The parish youth steered the evening of dinner and rounds of Hokey Pokey or the Chicken Dance.

Steered by Fr D’Souza, it was the church’s first attempt to help cash-strapped Christians opt for a “debt-free wedding” as an alternative to getting trapped in the vortex of elaborate weddings and frittering away hard-earned money in a moment, which not only got an entire community involved but is inspiring more couples to walk down the aisle.

“It was tremendously meaningful as I’ve been preaching about the need to scale down weddings,” said Fr D’Souza, reflecting on the challenge of helping parishioners deal with debts. “We’re the smallest parish in Bombay. Out of 880 parishioners, 70% live in the workers’ colony and slums. For a parish that isn’t very affluent, marriage is increasingly turning into an impossible dream. There are couples who have had their first child and still have not paid off their wedding debt. Pressure to conform is tremendous, leading young couples into a whirlpool of debt in the first few years of married life,” he rues. But that Sunday, the parish seemed to have smashed that glass ceiling.

Fr D’Souza proposed the plan at a parish council meeting a month ago. “Without batting an eyelid everyone agreed. By the time the meeting ended, a WhatsApp group, ‘Sailesh’s Wedding’, was abuzz. Around 15 people came forward with a wedding gown for Anjana. In fact, I had to clamp down on the excitement a bit as the idea was a minimal wedding!” laughs Fr D’Souza. “People opened out their hearts to give them a positive footing.”

When Fr D’Souza blogged about the wedding, it clocked in over 6,000 likes and shares, followed by a stream of messages pleading that the church take a stronger stance on trimming down weddings. “This is something that needed to be addressed for a long time. I hope many more follow suit,” reacted a reader, while another wrote: “If the Archdiocese spearheads and advocates this, it will become normal and no one will look down on this.”

There have been mass weddings in the community but Sailesh and Anjana’s decision to do away with an extravaganza which brought the community closer, seems to have changed the narrative. “Many people are feeling empowered and expressing their desire for a minimal wedding. There’s no more shame,” says Fr D’Souza. Over the past week, Sailesh has been receiving messages from friends and acquaintances expressing their wish to follow suit.

One of them is John Fernandes, a jewellery-maker from Malad’s Kurar village, who after five years of trying to save close to Rs 2 lakh for his wedding, felt struck down by the thought: “I have never seen that much money in my life. How can I exhaust all of it at once?”

John’s wait, along with that of many other couples, will soon be over with the church willing to walk them down the aisle. “For those who struggle to eke out a living, it’s time for us to condemn extravagant wedding celebrations as a social evil. You can’t deprive one of the joy of their wedding and the parish will do what it can to help a couple. We may not have the bishop around every time, but it takes very little to make a celebration memorable,” says Fr D’Souza.

John is next in line for a debt-free wedding in December. “All the money I was to spend in one day, I can put into a fixed deposit. No more tension, apart from arriving at the altar on time,” he beams.