Forever Yours

Indian wedding jewellery consists of sets in gold, diamonds, pearls and other precious metals and stones. These jewellery sets consists of earrings, chokers and bangles.  It is customary for the bride’s family to gift these jewellery sets to their soon to be married daughter. In India and in South Africa, you could say, marriage and jewellery go side by side.

The Indian wedding jewellery consists of different ornaments such as the mangal sutra, bindi, earrings, bangles, nose ring and rings, which are worn by brides all over the country.
Among Indian wedding jewellery, rings are a traditional symbol of matrimony and are worn by both men and women.  A married woman in India of the Hindu origin must wear the mangal sutra or a thaali around her neck.  The mangal sutra also worn around the neck consists of a necklace of black beads strung on a gold chain with a pendant at the end, which is either a symbol of OM or the gods.  The black beads are supposed to protect the marriage against evil.  The thaali is normally worn by women from South India which is a pendant worn on a thick yellow thread.
The chura is another symbol that consists India wedding jewellery.  It is a set of red bangles given to the bride from the maternal side of the family.  As a symbol of being married the bridegroom also presents the bride with toe rings.  In North India, however, women deck their arms with bright green and red bangles. This is called the chooda, which is presented by the mother of the bride to symbolise her newly acquired marital status, which she has to wear for at least 40 days after the wedding ceremony. Traditionally, the chooda is a set of ivory bangles with inlay work on them.
In the northeastern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar married women must wear the bichwa or toe rings as it is called. Among Sindhis, married women wear the traditional gold earrings each studded with nine diamonds.  Up further north, in the Himalayan region, Kashmiri Brahmin women wear the dejhoru and aath horu, which is an ornament worn in the pierced cartilage of the ear which has a cord suspended from it at one end.