Weddingbee Blog

Picture courtesy of Learning and Teaching Scotland

Several weeks ago, I visited a new dentist for a teeth cleaning. I’m still relatively new to Chicago and this dentist, who I will refer to as Dr. Judgy, came highly recommended by a co-worker.

As I leaned back in Dr. Judgy’s dentist chair, trying not to flinch as the glaring light shined into my eyes, he noticed my engagement ring.

“So you’re engaged?”, he exclaimed. Dr. Judgy was fairly young and Indian, like myself. I smiled awkwardly and nodded, for his fingers were still poking around inside of my mouth.

“When’s the big day?” he asked. “Nwext Jwrune”, I mumbled, trying not to drool all over Dr. Judgy’s fingers.

Reaching for his scraping tool, Dr. Judgy smiled widely and said, “Aww. I got married last year. Big Indian wedding?”

I shook my head as he pulled his fingers from the inside of my mouth. “Nope, medium-sized wedding”, I replied. “I think we’re going to have about 200 people.”

Dr. Judgy snorted and exclaimed, “200 people??? That’s not medium-sized, that’s tiny. You would get laughed at if you had an Indian wedding that small around here. My wedding had 800 people! Why on earth are you having such a small wedding?”

I looked at Dr. Judgy narrowly. He had resumed poking inside my mouth, so I was unable to respond with a stinging comeback (not that I actually had one anyway). I briefly considered biting his index finger, but decided to be civil (not a good idea to antagonize the dentist, I figured).

I waited until Dr. Judgy removed his fingers and I said pointedly, “I actually wanted something a bit more intimate. Besides, it’s really expensive to have so many guests.”

Dr. Judgy nodded and acknowledged, “Yeah our wedding was super expensive. At least hundreds of thousands of dollars. You really need to spend that much with that many people.” I sighed, thinking about how not every Indian family has hundreds of thousands to spend on a wedding. At that point, I’d had just about enough of Dr. Judgy. Luckily for me, my teeth-cleaning was done.

Long after the appointment was over, Dr. Judgy’s comments stayed with me. I knew I was bucking the tradition of having a large Indian wedding. But I had three very good reasons: (1) My parents primarily socialize among our family. Additionally, they are not really religious and therefore, not part of a religious community. That drastically reduces the number of family friends we have to invite. (2) Inviting that many guests would be extremely expensive. I know how much money my parents have for my wedding and I would rather have something smaller, but really nice instead of stretching my budget razor thin to accommodate hundreds of people. (3) I wanted something a little more intimate (if you can call 200 ppl intimate!). I’m shy by nature and not comfortable in big groups. I like the idea of having a wedding surrounded by family and friends, not my uncle’s friend’s friend and so on.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow I wasn’t measuring up– that I was shirking an important part of an Indian wedding by not having a large guest list. Was I somehow not Indian enough? Would our other Indian guests judge me for having a small guest list? I still wonder about that…

Have any of you felt judged for cultural traditions you’re keeping/not having? How have you dealt with it?

P.S. Obviously, I’m not going back to Dr. Judgy. Any recommendations for Chicago dentists would also be appreciated