Mona's Wedding Part 1

So this is a brief overview of an Indian wedding as seen through my sister's wedding. Festivities begin long before the actual ceremony. The Engagement Ceremony, which took a full day broken into two main parts, was done three months prior. During the next three months there was a lot of prep. Me and my cousin, Anjali, were responsible for providing music for multiple events, choreographing a family dance at the reception, and organzing her procession music. The Aunts were repsonsible for the the sweets and food at every event starting a week prior to the wedding. Half the aunts would cook for the wedding, the others would cook to feed everyone working during the day.


The first major ceremony is the Henna Night. This is where all the women get henna on their hands to celebrate the wedding. The decorative henna is done in intriquite designs. This is also to show who is a part of the bride and groom's immediate family (immediate family in the indian sense is all immediate family, all close cousins, aunts, uncles, close friends, and anyone else that needs to be invited through obligation). Mona's immediate family is 120 people.


Then there is of course meal time at which time there is sporadic dancing to celebrate the event. Everyone tends to join in. the older generation pull out their old moves and the younger generation struggles to keep up. I even did a little bit of dancing. I have the grass stains on my pants to prove it!



Then at this wedding in particular had a unique twist, as the groom's side is not from our part of India. They are from an area closeby but still have their own customs. One custom is coming to the bride's home and bringing her gifts. . . tons and tons of jewelry. I'm talking gold and jewels piled into four large gift baskets. I need to marry into this family.

With jewels in hand and a fresh coat of henna set to dry overnight, Mona went to bed to get ready for the next day's ceremony which will turn out to be an ALL DAY thing. I'm talking 10 hours of ceremonies. More to come. I'll keep you posted.

Post Wedding Relaxtation

So for those of you who didn't know, a week and a half ago my cousin got married! Now it was a lovely wedding. It was the full indian wedding. Five full days with ceremonies lasting as long as 4 hours long. I know what you are thinking: "I'm exhausted just thinking about it." Now imagine if you were a family member of the bride, the videographer, one of the dancers in the performance at the reception AND someone who is still working for his company via phone.

Well i'm back and i'm currently working on creating the wedding DVD. The groom like Rock music. U2, Aerosmith and the like. Anyone know any good songs that might be either comedic or romantic for this wedding video?

I'll post pictures and stuff from the wedding in the near future, but for now fully understand that i'm severly exhausted.