November 08, 2008

Sometimes, More is More

This weekend we attended the wedding of two wonderful people who make an amazing couple. It was also a Hindu Indian wedding and I can't settle on just one or two adjectives to describe it.  Beautiful, Breathtaking, Glittering, Awesome, Musical, Huge are all vying with one another.  Lesson One: if you want to throw an elegant affair, you simply need to invite Indian women and ensure they wear their sari's.  They were beautiful and looked comfortable; I was very jealous and expressed more than once my conviction that I would wear a sari to every dressy event if only I wouldn't look ridiculous.  And there were hundreds of them, wearing saris in every color of the rainbow, embroidered, beaded or floating.  There was food (lots and lots of food), music and dancing.  For the family, this literally started on Tuesday and continued through Saturday night.  We only attended Friday and Saturday, and I was still awed.  When we came in to Friday's celebration, I was told I needed to take bangles.  So, I took one set only to have every Indian woman I knew express concern over the next half hour that I didn't have more.  I finally took another set and no sooner did I put the bangles on my wrist than the groom's mother walked past me and said "good, good" as she patted my wrist.  Lesson Two: less is not more at an Indian wedding.  And, just in case I didn't learn that lesson the first time, the Saturday ceremony was three hours long.  Yes, three hours.  Followed by a cocktail hour and reception with more speeches, food and dancing than I've ever seen in one place.  And I can not begin to describe to you how it is they manage to have half a dozen speeches - speeches, not toasts - and stuff us full of plates of spicy food and still have hundreds of people on the dance floor.  It was amazing.My only regret is that I missed the henna. But, one of the other guests was kind enough to let me take a photo of hers. How cool is this?

1 comment:

Dallas said...

That's really cool that you got to experience such a different style of wedding. I had read about Hindu Indian weddings and they sound just beautiful. Thanks for sharing.