Jaffna Tamil Weddings.
by Hema Bala
Jaffna Tamil weddings are far different from the Tamilnadu marriage procedures.
Jaffna is the place where the Tamil language speaking community keeps it's identity for their language and culture in Srilanka. Due to the communal conflicts, many people from had took refuge in plenty of developed countries and are now living in far away places speaking different dialects other than their mother tongue. Many of them want to keep their family links with their relatives through marriages within their community children. They used to get the services of matrimonial websites, Newspaper classifieds and marriage brokers to find suitable brides and grooms for their children. They take much care to find out whether the partner is coming from the same village and cast of themselves and like to avoid if they had previously married and had divorced as many previously divorced people hide it to make another marriage.
Also many parents take time to find same cast partner for their children as most of the peninsula people are still looking after their cast. In the other hand many of these parents of the well qualified grooms used to look for dowry form the bride's family. Some greedy people are expanding it to unlimited level as to get dowry. Because of this problem plenty of girls are staying unmarried even after passing their marriage ages in the northern province..
Christian parents of the brides from these places used to insists the foreign grooms to bring their unmarried certificate from their family churches. If the boy or the girl is coming to Srilanka to get married to a local partner, then they used to take care of all the expenses related to the weddings, homecoming and parties.
If both of them are living in Northern Province then the marriage expenses are divided as follows.
If the marriage rituals take place in the girl's home then all the expenses of the ceremony will be met by the girl's family.
If it takes place in a banquet hall or in a Hindu temple then the expenses will be shared by both families.
Price of the Gold is too affecting area marriage as it is customary for the family of the bride to provide her at least with 160 grams of jewellery. In this year the gold price had fetched higher rate and this family must pay nearly US$ 10,000 to get this amount of gold for the occasion. After this her family must stand the dowry requirements and other related expenses where it comes as a big burden for a poor unmarried Jaffna girl living in Sri Lanka.
Like wise the boy too must make the traditional gold thaalee kodi at the price of US$ 5,000 to decorate her new wife at the time of the marriage..
