Hindu wedding in the context of Malayalam

Puja (Sanskrit: पूजा, romanized: pūjā) is a worship ritual performed by Hindus to offer devotional homage and prayer to one or more deities, to host and honour a guest, or to spiritually celebrate an event. It may honour or celebrate the presence of special guests, or their memories after they die. The word puja is roughly translated into English as 'reverence, honour, homage, adoration, or worship'. Puja, the loving offering of light, flowers, and water or food to the divine, is the essential ritual of Hinduism. For the worshipper, the divine is visible in the image, and the divinity sees the worshipper. The interaction between human and deity, between human and guru, is called a Darshanam.

In Hindu practice, puja is done on a variety of occasions, frequencies, and settings. It may include a daily puja done in the home, or occasional temple ceremonies and annual festivals. In other cases, puja is held to mark a few lifetime events such as the birth of a baby, house entering ceremony or grihapravesh, first rice-eating ceremony or annaprasana, wedding, sacred thread ceremony or upanayana ceremony for the Brahmins or to begin a new venture. The two main areas where puja is performed are in the home and at temples to mark certain stages of life, events or some festivals such as Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Janmashtami, and Lakshmi Puja. Puja is not mandatory in Hinduism. It may be a routine daily affair for some Hindus, a periodic ritual for some, and rare for other Hindus. In some temples, various pujas may be performed daily at various times of the day; in other temples, they may be occasional.

Agni (Sanskrit: अग्नि [ˈɐgni], meaning 'fire'), also called Agni Deva ('fire deity'), is the Hindu god of fire. As the guardian deity of the southeast direction, he is typically found in southeast corners of Hindu temples. In the classical cosmology of Hinduism, fire (Agni) is one of the five inert impermanent elements (Pañcabhūtá) along with sky (Ākāśa), water (Apas), air (Vāyu) and earth (Pṛthvī), the five combining to form the empirically perceived material existence (Prakṛti).

In the Vedas, Agni is a major and most invoked god along with Indra and Soma. Agni is considered the mouth of the gods and goddesses and the medium that conveys offerings to them in a homa (votive ritual). He is conceptualized in ancient Hindu texts to exist at three levels, on earth as fire, in the atmosphere as lightning, and in the sky as the sun. This triple presence accords him as the messenger between the deities and humans in the Vedic scriptures. The relative importance of Agni declined in the post-Vedic era, as he was internalised and his identity evolved to metaphorically represent all transformative energy and knowledge in the Upanishads and later Hindu literature. Agni remains an integral part of Hindu traditions, such as being the central witness of the rite-of-passage ritual in traditional Hindu weddings called Saptapadi (seven steps and mutual vows), in the Upanayana ceremony of rite of passage, as well being part of the diyā (lamp) in festivals such as Deepavali and Arti in Puja.

Parikrama or Pradakshina is clockwise circumambulation of sacred entities, and the path along which this is performed, as practiced in the Indic religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. In Buddhism, it refers only to the path along which this is performed. In Indic religions, the parikrama is typically done after completion of traditional worship (puja) and after paying homage to the deity. Parikrama must be done with dhyāna (spiritual contemplation and meditation).

In Hinduism, parikrama of religious deities in a temple, sacred rivers, sacred hills and a close cluster of temples as a symbol of prayer is an integral part of Hindu worship. Hindu temple architecture include various Pradakshina paths. There could a parikrama path surrounding the chief deity and several other broader paths concentric to the main path, although it is not uncommon to find non-concentric parikrama paths. At times the outermost parikrama path covers the whole village, town, city, thereby implying that the length of the path can stretch. Parikrama is also done around the sacred Peepal tree, tulsi (Indian basil plant), and agni (sacred fire or the fire God), and agni parikrama, known as Mangal phera, is a part of the Hindu wedding ceremony.

Bahaghara (Odia: ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବାହାଘର) is the Hindu wedding ceremony performed by Odia people in the Indian state of Odisha. It is the main ritual of an Odia Hindu wedding.

The wedding rituals are performed at the Duara (home of the bride) and Tola kanias (home of the groom).

Saptapadi (Sanskrit: सप्तपदी, romanized: Saptapadī, lit. 'taking together seven steps'), or saat phere (Marathi: सात फेरे, romanized: sāt phéré, lit. 'seven circumambulations'), is regarded to be the most important rite (Sanskrit: rītī) of a Hindu wedding ceremony.

In this rite, the bride and the groom tie a knot and take seven steps together, or complete seven rounds around a sacred fire, accompanied by one vow for each step. After the seventh, the marriage is considered complete.

Weddings in India are festive occasions and usually celebrated with extensive decorations, color, music, dance, outfits and rituals that depend on the community, region and religion of the bride and the groom, as well as their preferences. India celebrates about 10 million weddings per year, of which about 80% are Hindu weddings. Approximately 90% of marriages in India are still arranged. Despite the rising popularity of love marriages, especially among younger generations, arranged marriages continue to be the predominant method for finding a marriage partner in India.

A daughter's marriage can often be the most costly event in the life of an Indian family, with some estimate indicating that families spend more than six times a family's annual income on the wedding. Most of these costs go towards dowries and the wedding celebration. Scholars have characterized these expenditures as being strongly shaped by social norms and by desires to signal social status.