'I didn’t tell the groom's family at an Indian wedding I speak fluent Punjabi...'

"I didn’t tell the groom's family at an Indian wedding I speak fluent Punjabi..."

A few friends suggested that I share this story and see what people think. A few years ago now I went to an Indian wedding and thanks to my language skills, the bride was able to get some petty revenge on her in-laws. I think some context is probably required so bare with me ok.

I am a 30 year old white male living in the UK and the rest of my family are similar so to look at me or any of my family you would see a typical British family but were not typical. You see my grandparents were bad people and without going into it to much let's just say growing up my mum spent a lot of time with her best friend, Aditi, and who is of Indian heritage.

My mum and Aditi like to focus on the good when they talk about it, talking about it my mum says she would always come over to do stuff with Aditi’s family when they did stuff so my mum very much grew up around Indian stuff. Things didn’t change when they got older either, they both went to the same university, picked similar carriers and settled down in the same city and they are still very close.

As you can imagine my mum really didn’t like her parents so she very much embraced the Indian culture so that was a big thing for me growing up. As for my dad if anyone’s wondering he’s very much the kind of guy who would say happy wife happy life, if something makes my mum happy he does it.

So in spite of being white I grew up around all this Indian stuff and Aditi’s family might not be blood relations but there as close as it is possible to be, her daughter has always been like a big sister to me.

Growing up I met a lot of Aditi’s extended family some of who didn’t speak to much English, I don’t really remember it but apparently I started picking stuff up rather quickly. I’m told people decided that I clearly had a head for languages so they started encouraging me and taking me to lessons. It all worked out as well because I now speak five languages and have a job as an interpreter.

Now that context is done, we can get to the wedding drama. Aditi’s daughter who lets call Asha was getting married a few years ago and because we are basically family I was there for a lot of the celebrations.

For those who don’t know, Indian weddings have a lot of pre-wedding celebrations with various parties before the wedding and in Europe some even have two weddings one being the Indian wedding and the other being the European wedding. So I was at one of these pre wedding celebrations when I over heard something that caused a bit of a stir.

It was towards the end of the night and I was in one of the seating areas with the groom's mother and sister I was mostly just sitting there drinking so it didn’t bother me when they started talking in Punjabi at first. Honestly I found it kind of funny they didn’t realize I knew what they were saying but then they started talking about their plans to where white to the European part of the wedding.

Some might think doing something like that in such a setting would be different but it’s actually worse. First off Asha is very proud of her Indian heritage but at the same time there are plenty of things in the UK she likes so believe me having a gothic style celebration as well as the Indian one was very important to her.

Secondly in India, the color white is associated with funerals so this plan was a horrible idea on so many levels. I didn’t say anything to the mother and sister when I heard this because I wasn’t sure what to do but after everyone had gone I did tell Asha.

As you can imagine she was not happy, the groom offered to sort it out but Asha has never been one to take anything lying down, also she can be very petty when she wants to be. She would have gone nuclear if people hadn’t talked her down and got her to go with a lesser option for pay back which kind of worked out actually.

You see Asha is a bit of a goth, big fan of Wednesday Addams, so in the end she changed her dress for the European wedding to this black and purple dress and asked everyone else to come in white.

My mum for example actually got her wedding dress out of the loft and wore that and for my part I was able to find a cream suit to wear. Being since I was walking into the cathedral with one of the bridesmaids I didn’t see the reaction of the mum and sister when they came in and saw everyone wearing white, but apparently it was bad enough that Asha’s dad and my dad had to force the sister out.

Afterwards I probably should have just kept my head down but the mum was still there and I could see she was asking people how Asha found out and that kind of felt like a challenge. At the reception when people were doing speeches I asked to speak and did a speech about Asha and her new husband in Punjabi, I’m told Asha’s in laws hate me now but I don’t really care.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

CrunchyZombie4909 said:

Karma is quick but OP is quicker.

Snoringdragon said:

My only regret with this post is there are no pictures. I would have loved to see the black and purple gown against the white clothes of the guests. Bet she looked wickedly fabulous.

RGlasach said:

I love when nasty people get the tables turned on them! Good for you!

BuddyAdventurous3165 said:

Would love to see the dress! Karma is a b. Glad they got served.

AdvertisingTop7149 said:

I'm sure your friend loves you all the more for it. You are a true friend, and from what I can tell, MIL is going to be learning the hard way that she has less say in what DIL and son do. She will never be able to freely talk bad about DIL she will be too worried you might be nearby.