Bollywood Weddings explores how Indian-American Hindus negotiate two vastly different wedding cultures: those of mainstream America and of Hindu India. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and drawing on recent advances in material culture studies, Ramdya suggests that Bollywood, whose Indian origins grants it authenticity from the Hindu perspective and whose emphasis on romance accommodates American values, emerges as the key mediating third culture that allows Indian-American Hindus to reinforce their community's identity as ethnic and American even as it confirms that success in...

Bollywood Weddings examines how middle to upper class second-generation Indian-American Hindus negotiate wedding rituals, including the dating and engagement processes. Many of these couples are (in Ramdya's neologism) 'occasional Hindus' who display their Hindu religious background only on important occasions such as the rite of passage that is marriage. These couples (and their extended families) negotiate two vastly different cultures and sets of values inside a community that has itself largely pre-determined how to mix American and Indian/Hindu elements into this ritual. As a rule, the...