Dearest,

When one thinks of marriage and all the ceremonies that are associated with it, one can traditionally come up with images of gatherings of friends and family. The ceremonies beforehand, new clothes, festivities, the 7 rounds about the fire as the priest chants or the bride in a bright white gown with the groom in a black suit as the minister declares them man and wife and so on. The reception after that with the wedded couple on the stage as people take turns to wish them and pose for a photograph with the gifts they carry, and everyone smiling all around. It is indeed a wonderful sight to imagine with you in a sari and me in a sherwani.

Except, that it is not why and how I would want to marry you. I want you for how you are in your everyday. Yes, we will look better in our wedding dresses, having selected what to wear after careful choosing and scrutiny, with many man hours of effort in making us look better than we normally do. But, people don’t appreciate the effort in the everyday as much as I do. How you effortlessly carry off your daily sense of wearing. You don’t wear a sari in your everyday, but have you looked at yourself when you wear your daily clothes? Of course you have, but you haven’t looked at yourself from my eyes. There is a sense of awe I feel when I look at you in your everyday because in it your apparent effortlessness tries to hide the effort of the day to day. I find a trace of accomplishment in you that comes with being comfortable in one’s skin. When I say I want to marry you, it is this you that I want to marry. It is not the marriage of the sari clad and the sherwani clad that interests me, but that of you in your jeans and tee and me in my capris and shirt.

I understand wanting to celebrate it with our friends and family as one does at all occasions. I however, at times feel that marriage ceremonies are mostly like societal approval. I don’t want their consent to marry you, I want yours. I want to celebrate being together with you first, and friends and family later. I don’t think that my vows to you will be any more sacred with the holy fire as witness will be any more sacred than the ones I make to you when we’re alone in person. I never have believed, that having a fire or holy chants while we take our vows make our relation any stronger. It is the efforts that we put in the everyday that will make or break it, not the seven rounds we take around the holy fire as people shower us with flower petals and our parents get teary eyed. I definitely want to get a legal marriage certificate, as that would enable me to extend benefits like insurance and other things to you as it serves an advantage in my eyes.

So yes, if you want to celebrate with a large wedding then we will have that done. But marry me before you do in front of the rest of world. Let what it means to be ours, before it is so theirs.

My dearest, will you marry me?