Some brides and grooms travel to their wedding in a limousine, others in a horse-drawn carriage and others even on an elephant. But one Indian couple, determined to make it to their special occasion despite deadly floods, traveled to the venue inside a giant pot.
Desperate to get married, Indian couple floats in large pot to reach their wedding after flooding
In footage filmed Monday that has gone viral, Akash Kunjumon, 26, and his bride-to-be Aiswarya, 22, floated through murky waters in the state of Kerala, where flash floods and landslides have killed at least 22 people since the weekend.
“This turned out to be a wedding I was not expecting at all,” the bride said in a video by local media outlet Asianet .
Kunjumon asked that Aiswarya’s surname not be used out of respect for her family, which had opposed the wedding.
Two men and a cameraman can also be seen crossing the flooded roads to row with the couple to the Panayannurkavu Devi temple in Alappuzha district, where the wedding ceremony took place.
Despite the difficulties presented by the floods, the couple wanted the wedding to go ahead, the groom’s mother, Radhika Kunjumon, 44, told Reuters news agency.
“We had arranged the wedding and held it at the auspicious time despite the flood,” she said.
Akash Kunjumon said both he and Aiswarya work in the Covid-19 ward of a government hospital. He is part of the cleaning staff and she is a nursing assistant.
Kunjumon admitted that the magnitude of the flood had surprised him.
“We didn’t know there would be so much water,” he said. “We tried to make arrangements to get a boat, but we couldn’t get one.”
So this couple from Alappuzha district in Kerala used a large cooking vessel to wade through the flood water to get to their wedding venue. Even the wedding venue was flooded, but fortunately they managed to get married without missing the muhurtham time 🙂 pic.twitter.com/mqldzgKIkd
— Shilpa (@Shilpa1308) October 18, 2021
The ceremony was held with fewer than 10 guests. Video footage of the wedding shows the couple seated with garlands around their necks, after which Kunjumon places a chain, known as a Mangal Sutra, around his bride’s neck and vermilion on her head.
