In a bizarre incident, a 24-year-old girl named Kshama Bindu in Gujarat’s Vadodara has decided to marry on June 11, with everything in place except a groom. Because, she will be marrying herself. The girl has penned down five vows for the wedding with herself which will be solemnized at a temple in Gotri.
According to the reports, the wedding that is scheduled to take place on June 11, will be performed in the traditional manner including the rituals of pheras, sindoor, and others. The only thing that will not be seen at the wedding will be the groom and his big fat ‘baraat’.
Explaining her thoughts behind this first-of-its-kind wedding, soon-to-be bride Kshama said that she never wanted to get married but always wanted to become a bride. She said that her parents are open-minded and that they accepted her with her unique wedding plans. “I never wanted to get married. But I did want to become a bride. So I decided to marry myself”, she was quoted. Kshama said that she also researched to find out whether any woman in the past had married herself out of self-love, but there were no results. “Maybe I am the first to set an example of self-love in our country”, she added.
“Self-marriage is a commitment to be there for yourself and unconditional love for oneself. It’s also an act of self-acceptance. People marry someone they love. I love myself and hence this wedding,” explained Kshama. Realizing that some people in the community or even outside the community might think that marriages like these are irrelevant, she said that her objective behind marrying herself is to portray the importance of self-love and that every woman matters.
Recent cases of Sologomy on Earth-
According to the reports, the concept of sologamy (marrying self) has been on the rise since the spread of COVID-19 where women say that they realized how important self-love is. The present self-wedding case in Gujarat might be the first of its kind in India but not sure on the earth.
Recently, in August 2021, Nneka Carter from USA announced on social media that she was all ready to get married to herself. “I do”, she said to herself at a wedding that was attended by her family members and her friends in Tampa, Florida. “The pandemic reminded me that I just need to be happy. I didn’t want to feel alone or lonely because I didn’t have a companion, or I wasn’t in a relationship”, she was quoted.
51-year-old Enna Jones also married herself in September 2020, after surviving the bad patch of her life during the COVID spread. Jones promised to be truthful to herself and to love herself until death do her part in a wedding ceremony in North Carolina. Even celebrities like Victoria’s Secret model Adriana Lima, singer Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Bradshaw, etc have solemnized self-marriage by embracing themselves with diamond rings.
About Sologamy or self-marriage-
Sologamy, also affirmatively known as self-marriage is marriage by a person to themselves. Reports mention that this kind of marriage is not a binding, legal affair and the person is free to marry someone else in the future without officially divorcing themselves. In the present self-marriage case in Vadodara, Gujarat, Kshama Bindi, the soon-to-be bride has written five vows for herself to solemnize the wedding at the temple and has planned a two-week-long honeymoon in Goa.
