A transition into womanhood, an important phase of a girl’s life, a signification that she is no longer a child, the time when she needs lots of blessings from elders, a time to become aware of the changes she and her body is undergoing, a time to just relax and be cool to become a woman from a little girl – yeah you guessed it right – hitting puberty for a girl is the time when half saree function or a saree ceremony is held.
A gentle transformation from a girl into a woman!
The whole process is just the enhancement of the particular girl’s feminine nature and beauty almost celebrated equally to a wedding. This is generally a colorful Indian ritual or religious practice for girls performed at the age of 9, 11, or 13 depending on when they reach puberty. It doesn’t mean that she cannot be an empowered woman if she accepts such celebrations. This is a wrong notion or myth. If she is comfortable this kind of celebration is always an opportunity that she gets to be the center of attraction and yet her true self. Being the heroine of the day adds to her confidence and she will learn to face people without any shyness or reserved nature. It is named as half saree or saree ceremony because it is the first time a girl wears a saree or half-saree. The traditional names of this function are ritu shuddhi or ritu kala samsara. The first being baby birth and the second is this ritu shuddhi where she becomes a woman marking a physical change accompanied by a change in clothing giving a new identity to her.
What happens during the half saree ceremony?
It’s truly a grand celebration which is set up in a mandapam or the home of the girl in case they can accommodate the crowd invited like friends, family, relatives, neighbors, and others of their choice. A special chair is arranged for the girl on a grandly decorated stage setup. She will wear a half saree or pavadai davani or langa voni or langa dhavani. She can be accompanied by her friends or close relative and parents on the stage. They invite all the guests to the stage to give gifts and bless the girl for a bright future and then the normal arrangements of traditional food, photoshoots, biscuits, and chocolate distribution, music or dance troops performances, mehndi art, etc. happen as per the convenience of the host who is the girl’s parents. The girl receives normally gifts like a saree, half saree or jewelry on this day. The girl’s parents are ready with return gifts like traditional sweet boxes, bags, handbags, small vessels or other simple show pieces to be given like a party favor.
Special ideas to make the function more memorable!
Sometimes half saree functions are grander than weddings. So, there are numerous things to concentrate upon before making necessary arrangements. If you are a person who is living abroad in countries like the USA, then this is the right time to introduce culture and tradition to your children. A few of the things you can do are
- Do the best bridal makeup for the girl who reached puberty as she must be the show stealer of the day.
- Buy and make her wear the best jewels ever and it can be gifted during her wedding as a set which she will remember forever. As girls grow mature at this age and not many changes happen before marriage in their body, these jewels will not go out of size. It is a kind of savings the parents make for her.
- Arrange for mehndi artists who will engage kids of her age to also have fun and enjoy the celebrations.
- Buy the best return gifts ever to make it a memorable occasion for the guests too. It can be something like sweets or snacks that interests them picked from the traditional list rather than the cocoa flavored or vanilla flavored or strawberry flavored chocolates. These rare kinds of sweets like bellam kommulu, bellam minapa sunnundalu, venna vunalu, pootharekulu etc are quite exciting to the guests when received as return gifts.
- Cut a cake and make it more modern – a sweet cake rather than a sucrose or sugar filled cake. The cake can also be an Indian sweet like palakova, Bombay halwa, whole dilpasand, a big uncut Mysore pak and many more innovative ideas can be got delivered at your doorstep. Contact us @ +91 7981882581 for more details.
- Have a special theme for the half saree function like Frozen, Barbie, Harry Potter, Peacock, Minnie Mouse, Rainbow, Stars, Angel, Butterfly, etc and make it fun for the girl who is the central sparkle of the day.
- Best time pass activities like a few game organizers or magic shows or orchestra or dance parties can be arranged making it livelier for the crowd who attend the half-saree ceremony.