The latest trends in celebrity weddings one reads about is that the world rights are sold for amazing amounts of money. The most recent case is the Colleen-Rooney wedding rights going for a whopping £2.5 million. One had witnessed the Liz Hurley-Arun Nair wedding frenzy in Jodhpur recently that was also reportedly sold for two million pounds.

So what do the wedding rights consist of?  From the way the local, national and international press were trying to gate-crash into the wedding and were being barred by the Ummaid Bhawan's (the palace hotel where the marriage was taking place) burly watchmen, I guessed that the wedding rights meant that the minute details photographed of the marriage proceedings, would not be available to all and sundry.

I also concluded that it included a stipulation that most close family members would not be invited. As in the Liz Hurley-Arun Nair wedding the groom's father reported that he was treated badly to the press. And now I read a news item stating that Colleen refused to invite the England striker's extended family.

So what is it about celebrity weddings that magazines would dish out so much money for? When they are hardly celebrities. Who is Liz Hurley? A sometime actor/model. And no one knows Arun Nair. So why would people be interested in their lives?
We had our local Hindi papers showing Liz Hurley's five year old son (through some other liaison) sitting next to his mother through the sacred Hindu marriage rituals. The wedding rights must be showing us as possessing quaint or esoteric ceremonies. It was a mockery of everything solemn and pure.

The chaos outside Ummaid Bhawan was being televised and in the melee someone eve teased a female correspondent. So are these marriages special? Something that all of us ordinary beings look up to? Or are they an on-going entertainment circus? Are we as a society so starved of entertainment that we will pay good money to just watch two (somewhat moderately) successful people go through the motions of routine life. Have we turned into a voyeuristic society? Or in an attempt to make some more money the so-called celebrities have commoditized their lives?

I guess we are hungry to watch film stars' marriages. I watched every TV channel showing an aging actor marrying for the third time to a woman who was seen on an 'item song' in a film. I wonder why they had not sold the wedding rights. May be if I were a film star I would periodically get married to replenish my bank balance.

What about the pomp and show of a royal wedding? Who can forget the angelic, shy young Diana and a handsome Prince Charles wedding? Why didn't they auction their wedding rights? Maybe the concept had not come of age at that time. But when an elderly Prince Charles married again surely he could have made money on this deal? We would then have to be contented with watching the shots of people crowding outside the Windsor Castle to get a glimpse of the royal couple. No this would never happen, since royalty rests on the support of the people. The large public must approve it. If the royals shut them out of even the entertaining spectacles and deny them a glimpse of 'royalty' in all their finery during marriages, the royals might have to pay a heavier price by losing their royal status altogether. The brief time when the waiting, watching public feels they are part of the royalty is this- the royal couple waving and smiling to their ruled. Hence, wedding rights are not sold. On the other hand we can watch it on any TV channel we want to. Most newspapers and magazines carry their pictures.

And what about the marriages of ordinary mortals? All of us crave for our thirty seconds of fame. During wedding season one cannot drive as most roads are blocked with dancing young men and women (to the accompaniment of a loud and tuneless band)  who thoughtlessly cause traffic jams and momentarily make us pause and stare unwillingly at them and the groom in all his finery. We wonder when this insanity will end and we can snake our way to yet another marriage at the other end of the town? Surely there are no buyers for such wedding rights.

Isn't marriage a time for families and friends to get together and celebrate life; without causing distress to others? When two young people begin their new life don't we gather to bless them and reassure them that we will be there through the good and the bad times? I guess celebrity and royal weddings don't require such blessings and good wishes.