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Bride Marries Wedding Guest After Her Groom Runs Away

The groom developed cold feet just before the wedding ceremony began. 
Shamani Joshi
Mumbai, IN
Bride Marries a Guest At Her Wedding After Groom Sneaks Out
Photo for representative purposes only courtesy Christopher Brown / Unsplash 


A wedding in the southern Indian state of Karnataka took a bizarre turn when the bride married a guest, discovering that the groom sneaked out. 

Two brothers, identified only as Ashok and Navin, were all set to get married in simultaneous ceremonies Sunday, Jan. 3. However, while Navin participated in all the pre-wedding ceremonies with his to-be wife Sindhu, he developed cold feet on the day of his wedding. According to local news reports, Navin had a girlfriend, who threatened to die by suicide  at the function if he went ahead with his wedding. This prompted the groom to run away from his own wedding, deserting the bride. 

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To comfort the woman, her family decided to get her married right then to any guest who volunteered. A guest named Chandrappa, who worked for the local municipal corporation, agreed to marry the bride who had been left at the altar. 

A similar incident took place in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in 2015, when an angry bride decided to marry a guest from her brother-in-laws family after her groom, who had hid his epileptic condition from his to-be wife, had a seizure and collapsed. 

In India, weddings are an important social affair and a family’s status or honour is often determined by the choice of bride or groom. There have been several bizarre weddings that occurred across the country over the last year. Earlier this month, a man in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh married two women at the same time in one of the most publicly acknowledged polyamory wedding ceremonies in India. 

In June last year, a man married a wooden effigy in a bizarre ceremony in Uttar Pradesh to fulfill his father’s wish of seeing him happily married. 

In March last year, a bride walked out in the midst of her own wedding ceremony after spotting an ex at the function. 

Weddings are also a common scam that people pull off in India. In November 2020, a woman, who lost her job due to India’s strict lockdown, married three men and ran away with their money. 

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