Pre-Wedding Rituals

In the cultural pervasion of religion that all Asia has experienced, many Buddhist weddings are arranged. A wedding broker is normally responsible for the match between bride and groom. He or she will visit families of the area assessing their wealth, health, social status and prospects. When visiting families, the wedding broker can easily suggest a match for their child, having mentally catalogued the available people of the area.

A family will likely take the marriage broker's advice and pay a preliminary visit to the family of the person suggested. The parents of the two families will meet without the children to assess each other's prospect, checking the informational intelligence of the marriage broker. After several more visits, including one with an astrologer, the couple to be wed will meet and hopefully give the final okay to the wedding.

After having agreed upon a dowry amount, the astrologer will decide on a mutually auspicious date for the couple to wed. During the pre-wedding days, the couple may choose to receive monks in their new home. The monks will bless the house with holy water and recite verses from the Tipitaka (Buddhist holy book). As the monks complete their blessing, the groom's family will offer them alms (gifts) to bring good luck to the marriage.

Among the Buddhists either the parents or the boy choose his prospective bride. Once it is decided that the you want to marry this particular girl, a family friend would usually go to the girl's house. He would carry a bottle of whisky and a white silk scarf called khada to offer. It is meant to see whether they give a nod to the proposal. This type of visit is usually known as Khachang.In case the family agree, the next step after Khachang is a meeting between the two families. In such a meeting, the members of both the families compare kikas. They set a good date on which the engagement can take place. Tradition has it that the boy presents a gift to his fiancé. This gift could be as big as a land. The kika also decides about the colors of the dresses of the bride and the groom. Most of the marriages world wide over hold the notion that black color is not auspicious. Hot colors like those of red and gold are the preferred colors for the occasion.

This is the ceremony which has the formal engagement taking place. The Nangchang is presided over by a lama or rimpoche. The maternal uncles of both the sides play an important role in the ongoing marriage negotiations. On the boy's side, the mama and the siblings play important role. Whereas, the girl's side has the entire family, friends and the mama joining the occasion. The guests would bring Tsang and many kinds of meat to the girl's house. They gift rice and chicken especially to the girl's mother. This is a token payment for the mother to have breast-fed her girl. The ritual has that the meat and tsang are also given to the girl's mamas as well as to the unmarried elder sisters and brothers. The kikas would be matched again and an auspicious date for the marriage is fixed. A propitious day is also decide for the girl's departure from her maiden house. The young couple mostly live together either in the girl's or the boy's house after the engagement.

Post-Wedding Rituals

The girl's departure from her paternal house is also selected from the kika. This day could be any day between the first day after marriage till the tenth day.

Once officially married, the couple receives their guests with the huge feast and decorations prepared in the previous days to the wedding.