The Big Day for an Indian same-sex Couple

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Netflix’s The Big Day” showcases six weddings that represent the highest end of India’s $50 billion wedding industry.  This is a conservative country where arranged marriages are still more popular than the ‘swipe left’  culture of the West. They are not only very traditional but when you are as wealthy as the families featured here, they are exorbitantly expensive in a  society that still encourages you to flaunt extravagance. That’s despite the vast majority of the rest of the country are living in extreme poverty (according to The Brookings Report)

That still didn’t stop Queerguru rooting for former cruise ship captain Tyrone Braganza, who is from the Southern Indian city of Goa, and the German-born celebrity makeup artist Daniel Bauer. We saw Braganza and Bauer working to create wedding ceremonies that both acknowledge their relationship and honor the traditions of Braganza’s Goan Catholic family, Bauer’s German ancestry, and the South Indian culture of Bauer’s Chennai-born grandfather.

Whilst homosexuality was de-criminalised  in India in 2018, same-sex marriage is still prohibited, and will probably remain so for at least another decade, if not longer.  Nevertheless, Braganza and Bauer’s wedding was widely covered in the Indian media, and several of Bauer’s celebrity clients attended the ceremony.

Visibility has always been an essential part of the fight for LGBTQ rights, and so it was great that the show also introduces the audience to Braganza’s mother and Bauer’s parents.  Both of whom were apprehensive initially but eventually came around to support the couple