Wedding day

I haven’t had time to blog in a while, so today I’ll be playing catch up…

So Thursday was the day of T’s coworker’s wedding and I went to pick my sari up on Wednesday night. I attempted to try it on @ the store but the blouse's hooks were hard to fasten and I didn’t have anyone to help me with it, so I figured I’d just do it at home. Plus, it was made to my specific measurements so why wouldn’t it fit? Bad assumption.

The blouse was so tight that T could barely even get the hooks fastened, I thought they were going to pop off. Plus I could barely breathe…I felt like a character in one of my historical fiction novels wearing a damn corset. The store was obviously closed at that point so I called first thing Thurs morning when they opened at 11am and explained the situation. The guy who sold me the sari in the first place answered and told me to come over right away and they’d fix it on the spot, so I threw clothes on and hopped in a car. Luckily they were able to make it bigger since the tailor left some extra fabric inside.

While I waited I watched one of the guys sewing tiny beads all over a bridal sari, it must have cost a few thousand dollars but it was amazing. The people in the store were really nice and chatting with me about America and how I liked Hyderabad. Everyone is so friendly here and genuinely interested in making conversation, something I don’t experience too often back home.

Anyway I had a lady at the hotel come up and help me wrap the sari that night, since it’s kind of a complicated procedure. The driver stopped at T's office to pick him and R, his Indian coworker, up at the office and then we headed to the hotel where the wedding was taking place. It was about 30 minutes away but with rush hour traffic it took forever. The wedding started with the bride and groom welcoming everyone and taking photos. They stood up on a stage covered in flowers and took a picture with every single guest. As you can imagine this took a really long time (and it’s common for Indian weddings have 1,000 guests or more). This one was smaller, but it’s hard to say how many people were there b/c a lot of the guests show up to say hello and congrats and leave after a little while, so there were always people going in and out.

The bride’s mother was super cute and she came over and hugged us and led us over to a table where they had flowers and different things. She put some red colored powder on our foreheads and then tied some flowers in my hair. Then she took this rosewater sprinkler thing and threw water on us (not sure what the significance of this is). We took seats with R and another one of T’s Indian coworkers and his wife in front of the stage and watched the couple take more pictures, then it was our turn to go up. We gave our gift to them and took some pictures and then went to go eat.

They had an Indian buffet set up in another room so one of T’s coworkers went through the line with me and pointed out what everything was and was very excited to have me taste the different foods. There weren’t really tables in the room – just 2 or 3, and then a few chairs lining the walls, so we all stood in the middle of the room and ate. I tried a few new things but didn’t really like them. As anyone who knows me can attest, I’m not an adventurous eater, so at least I tried.

T’s coworkers were asking a lot of questions about how American weddings were different and it was funny because they were DYING LAUGHING when we told them that in America you send an RSVP card and the person has to say whether they’re coming and to check off whether they want chicken or beef or whatever. R was like “I’ll have one of everything!” Lol. They also enjoyed the concept of “open bar” (a lot of Indian weddings don’t serve alcohol – this one didn't). R explained that the weddings are different according to the region and the particular religious traditions, etc. This wedding only had vegetarian food for example, but R is from Delhi and said that at his wedding they would have only non-veg food and would have alcohol.

The actual wedding ceremony wasn’t until 10:53 p.m. – R told us that they choose the time based on astrology so a wedding could be held at any random time like 2:09 a.m. or 1:54 p.m. depending on what the astrological stuff says. Unfortunately they all had to go back to the office, so we weren’t able to stay for the ceremony part. The event is over after that though, there’s not dancing or anything else. We left around 10 and got back to the hotel at 10:30 since rush hour was over and the roads weren't nearly as bad. A lot of people in the hotel complimented me on the sari and they seemed happy that I was wearing the traditional dress. Overall we enjoyed seeing the different traditions and it was really nice that we were invited. Everyone was so welcoming and kind to us and I’ll never forget that!