They took the plunge – actually. A couple dived 60 feet underwater for a distinctive wedding ceremony on Monday morning in Chennai. V Chinnadurai and S Swetha got married in what is getting referred to as the very first regular Hindu underwater wedding, reports the Times of India. The bride and groom reportedly woke up at the crack of dawn to dive off the coast of Neelankarai dressed in their regular wedding finery.
The bride wore a red sari and the groom dressed up for the massive day in a dhoti. This in spite of the truth that ahead of the wedding, they had only practiced diving in wet suits.
“It was a traditional marriage ceremony, only it was underwater. We dived in at an auspicious time in the morning and exchanged garlands and tied the thaali before 7.30 AM as per instructions from our priest,” groom Chinnadurai, a application engineer and a licensed scuba diver, told TOI.
While the groom has been scuba diving for 12 years, the bride took lessons in the month major up to the wedding. She mentioned it was the groom’s family members who recommended an underwater wedding.
“But they convinced me and after due training in a swimming pool and also after a few scuba diving sessions, I was confident enough and took the plunge today. The first time that I went to the bottom of the sea, I saw live fish swimming by me. It was an experience of a life time,” Swetha told The Hindu.
Videos from the underwater wedding had been shared on Facebook. You can watch it right here.
Describing the ceremony, the groom mentioned that it took 45 minutes to comprehensive the underwater rituals and added that they chose to get married in this distinctive manner to spread awareness about water pollution. “We are worried about finding masks under water. We wanted to create an awareness about this and so chose our wedding as an occasion,” he mentioned.