Staged proposals

Proposals once used to be personal, intimate affairs. Now they have become grand, elaborately staged events. With a whole crew to make the event memorable — professional photographers, videographers, musicians to costumes — it’s a dramatic proposal for all to see, shoot and like.

Wedding photographer Rahul Lal shares, “I don’t think there’s any harm in documenting and organising grand productions for proposals and marriages as long as it’s for your personal use or collection. But nowadays this is mostly done for social media, for the likes. I also don’t think proposals were ever a personal affair — friends of the bride/groom and their common friends have always been part of such gestures.”

However, Komal Shankaran who just got engaged feels that a planned proposal is something which is artificially created with a particular theme. “Though it is very common nowadays, there is always a lack of innocence and the curiosity about the answer. These planned proposals are an outcome of Bollywood movies for sure, which makes every boy Raaj proposing to Simran.”

Swarnalatha Iyer, a consultant psychologist too believes that the portrayal of grand marriage proposals like these on social media by celebrities disillusion and shift the focus of marriage. “There was a young girl that came to me yesterday and she said ‘I’m feeling left out because my parents are so consumed with preparations of marriage.” Iyer stresses the need to understand the concept of marriage and celebrating the newness rather than concentrating on the glitter. “Marriage should be about how to carry forward the relationship and the life after the event. But portrayals like these make the superficial stuff more important — the event may be two or three days long but it should be the life after the event that should be focussed and worked on,” she adds.

It’s rightly said that ‘not all the glitter is gold.’ Amidst the planning and the eagerness to get the right shot, the essence of the moment is lost. “Listening to the photographer and adjusting according to light, so that the right amount of light falls on you, one ends up missing out the very moment that the two have spent ages planning. All you take back home is an album full of photos and a video but no real memories,” says Komal who got engaged to her college sweetheart. “My fiance took a heart-shaped balloon and tied the thread of the ballon to my ring finger. And that’s how he popped the question and I obviously said yes. It was strange because we were at a friend’s place having lunch together and while everyone was talking and playing, we were just blushing,” adds Komal as she narrates her story.

Dolma who recently got married had a traditional proposal with no drama being staged for the world to see. “It was a very intimate affair with family and close friends. Something that I really wanted as it is a day that’s important for me, my partner and the people who love and care about us. I understand the idea of documenting the event but going out of the way to make it into an elaborate affair seems really trivial,” she says.