Hi, For the most part Christian weddings have similar set up to western weddings in that the brides do wear white, nowadays brides tend to wear dresses instead of sarees, although with sarees there is trend towards gold color the past few years. 

What probably sets Malaylali Syro-Malabar Christians from the west and even other Christians of India is the use of Minnu or Thali, or as it is known in the North as mangal sutra. I could be wrong but I have never seen other Indian Christians with a Minnu. But this locket is much smaller and has a cross on it, I would say it’s smaller than the average pinky nail lol. Also I wanna say this is very much a Syro-Malabar tradition, because I have a few Malayalee non-syro Christian friends and they did not have this during their ceremonies. It’s one of the things adopted from Hindu marriage traditions seen in Syro-Malabar Christians. 

Because arranged marriages are more common, so proposals aren’t really a thing, so the rings are plain gold bands, with the other’s name engraved on the outside, the couple exchanges it during the wedding ceremony. Oh and the husband gives wife his first gift which is a saree, that is blessed during the ceremony by the priest. This saree is worn during the reception and referred to as the Manthrakodi, a silk saree with heavy kasavu (gold or silver thread work), often Kanchipuram is picked. Don’t worry the girl picks what she likes way before the wedding, also so she can get the blouse stitched in time. Manthrakodi is also a Syro-Malabar tradition. 

There is a lot of wedding videos of different Christian weddings on Youtube, you can watch and see the different rituals. 

Hi, Christian traditions can vary from one denomination to another as it is in the west, with added layer of being a Malayali but I can only speak about Malayali Catholics, because I am one.

You can look to the Easter and Christmas cultural post to get a little bit of history and traditions on what we practice and why. One thing to keep in mind is you cannot compare Western or even northern Indian Christianity to that of Kerala (maybe even extend it to Tamil Nadu, since St. Thomas did travel there too). Our traditions did not start with european christianity, it is heavily influenced by Jewish and Syrian Christian beginnings. So, our traditions are result of absorbing Jewish, Syrian, and Hindu practices. 

As for baptism, again just for Catholics. Our baptismal name is different than official/formal name, it often becomes the middle name. Our baptismal name is usually our grandparents name, this is the most common practice within our community. Paternal grandparents get the priority so the first girl and first boy in the family, then maternal grandparents for the second born girl and boy, but this does not mean you have to do it this way. There are plenty of people who choose other names or pick a saint’s name for added protection for the child and perhaps influence a certain trait in the child. There is a patron saint for nearly everything.

Just as it in the west, only good standing Catholics can be god parents. For Malayalees usually these are family members, grandparents getting priority here again in the same way, in my case it was my grandma and my eldest uncle, as my grandpa had passed when my dad was still young. As my cousins are getting married and having children, god parents can be anyone in the family not necessarily their parents.

I hope this was informative, and feel free to add on to this post about other practices of Catholics and other Christian denominations of Kerala. 

most of us live in the us!

imo, start with learning how to write tamil, it’s not that difficult, just memorisation. i haven’t found any apps for tamil, but pebbles tamil is a youtube channel aimed at small children to learn tamil, so if you lack vocab that’s a place where you can go. upenn has free tamil grammar resources, as well as a bunch of other unis that have tamil courses - i’d rec trying to find a pdf or a course outline for those, they do a really good job teaching formal tamil (usually written). also, if comprehension is your main goal i would recommend going on youtube, finding a video in tamil, and slowing it down. you can refer to https://currylangs.tumblr.com/post/176389398600/iv-never-been-able-to-speak-my-mother-tongue this ask as well (sorry idk how to do the linky thing on tumblr lmao) and check the tamil tag for any resources we have up on the blog. hope this helped!

-aryan

wow i can’t spell i just looked over those fjskfkslfkd sorry i’ll go fix those rn

thank you !

- aryan

hi! so upenn has tamil grammar resources, as well as the lessons on our blog and the tamil nadu government has free pdfs of tamil textbooks used in school that teach grammar, although iirc the tn books are monolingual.

hope this helps, sorry for the late reply!

- aryan

apart from our blog, which has grammar and vocab lessons, i actually used the psle oral exam app as well as some of their textbook pdfs for tamil, plus the american tamil academy’s pdf’s. for listening, i would recommend a lot of kids youtube, and while it’s really slow, a lot of the time they teach you proper vocab (pebbles tamil is good), you can watch it in 2x speed if you want.

so sorry for the late reply!

-aryan

I learned stroke order from this youtube channel and this textbook. Writing isn’t going to look the same as print, so don’t be discouraged when .

Sorry for the late response!

- Snow

Thank you! We’re glad we can help!

Telugu doesn’t have any equivalent to the word “to be”! I’ve only really seen that show up in Indo-European languages 

lmao sorry im dumb and i spelt it wrong, i’ll fix it rn! thank u!!

- aryan

aaa thank you!! also thank you for appreciating our movie/tv show translation posts lol because they take the longest for us to make