How a Gay Indian Wedding is Breaking Gender Stereotypes

Gender roles? Not at this gay Indian wedding.

Transcript

00:00It is my honor to now pronounce Vaibhav and Parag as husbands for life!

00:30I want to have those same traditions and rituals and I want to show the world that it is possible

00:51to have that, whether you're a straight couple or a gay couple.

01:02In daily weddings, whether they're Hindu or Muslim or Sikh, there's so much gender specificity,

01:07right?

01:08There's the role for the girl, the role for the boy, the role for the maternal side, the

01:11role for the paternal side.

01:13We are very, very gender specific.

01:15And so that required us to redo certain things.

01:27Why can't the groom be given away?

01:29Why can't we call it Vardhan?

01:31As in the var or the groom being given away.

01:33And when you put a var and dhan together, that becomes a blessing from God.

01:45Typically the women of the family who come and give blessings and also whisper words

01:52of advice on marriage in their years.

01:54So what we decided to do, we didn't incorporate women of our family, but we also incorporated

01:59same sex couples.

02:00It was meaningful to us that we are having our rituals, we are getting what we want.

02:05We are also trying to make it meaningful for us and people who are seeing this, because

02:09there is definitely no template to it.

02:30Particularly for Indian parents, we don't have a reference point for this.

02:44It's not like in our Gujarati language, there's a word for gay.

02:48It's not like our parents grew up seeing gay people in movies and gay people on TV and

02:53seeing gay people living healthy and productive lives.

02:55That is sort of the piece that I think we all have to forgive each other for.

02:59You know, none of us are perfect.

03:01I want to tell people that it's not an English thing.

03:25Indian people have it.

03:26Hindi speaking, Telugu speaking, Malayalam speaking, Tamil speaking, Bangla speaking,

03:30everybody have it.

03:31There are many, but they don't feel comfortable talking about it because they don't have a

03:34frame of reference.

03:41Being out and being proud and being free is not something that belongs to any one race

03:46or one religious group or one socioeconomic class.

03:50The right to love and the right to live our lives on our own terms, that is our birth

03:54right.