Attending an Asian wedding is usually a longish affair nowadays.
Especially, for affluent families and couples, this can be spread over several weeks.
There are those song and dance sessions before the actual wedding ceremony.
The more traditional ceremonies like Tilak and Henna and eventually the wedding and the post wedding reception in all their splendour do bring forth a celebration of colour, and they are normally associated with a lot of traditional foods.
Food and all things in Asia go hand in hand.
Whether it is a birth or death, a wedding or birthday, the food served to the guests must be grand in both taste and variety, whereas in the west, weddings are associated with wine and dance and a few food dishes that are usually not that elaborately prepared.
Importance is usually given to the wedding cake.
Asian foods, particularly during the wedding scene, are a sight to behold.
They are prepared with the most painstaking effort and are looked forward to by all participants.
They are usually very rich in calories and extremely high in cholesterol.
The sweets are very rich in oil and sugar.
Let us look at some of the more traditional wedding dishes that are usually offered at most venues.
There will always be two things present amongst the menu of the Asian wedding; rice and a rather rich meat based curry.
These are considered the staple offerings of a wedding.
It would just not be a wedding without these two items.
The rice is usually prepared in a meat-based sauce itself and is accompanied by several yogurt based salads.
If rice is not present in the main course, you can bet that it will be present in the sweets, usually served after the main course, in the form of sweet rice.
A dish called "Biryani" is made with a meat base, which sometimes has various colours of layered rice.
The main course usually has several main dishes, with one or two meat-based dishes like "Qorma", a very traditional meat dish, laced with a lot of oil.
This dish has roots in the Mughal era of India and is considered a very formal offering.
There is also another famous meat-based dish called "Karahi Gosht".
This is essentially meat, cooked in a large vat with lots of oil and spices.
Barbeque items are also a very widely practiced tradition in Asian weddings.
These usually range from roasted lamb legs, chicken wings to entire barbecued chicken.
Spicy Indian pickles are in accompaniment to these items, although ketchup has replaced these in modern times.
One must always remember the sweet course of the traditional Asian wedding menus.
These are equally elaborate and are somewhat unique to the region.
There is the traditional rice pudding called, "Kheer" or a finer grained version of the rice pudding called "Firni".
Very sweetly prepared bread slices, called shahi tukra, are also a Mughal based Asian sweet, served at special occasions.