The second wedding story isn’t nearly as long (I think!), but I thought I’d separate it out anyway. A couple of weeks ago my cousins’ son got married. To explain, no he’s not a kid – well, he is and always will be in my mind, but he’s really 25. Her mother and mine are sisters, but my Mom is quite a bit younger than all her siblings as she wasn’t born until after her oldest brother died from childhood illness. My Mom’s other siblings both married very young – her sister at 19 and I think her brother was 20 – and had children right away. My Mom also married fairly young, though after college, at 22 and waited sometime to have children – of which I’m her youngest. So there’s nearly a 20 year age gap between my oldest cousins and me (the youngest of our generation). The 2 oldest cousins both got married at 22 and had children in their 20s, so I’m generally much closer in age to their children than to them. But their children are still several years younger than me and I’ve always been aware of that generation gap – making the idea of one of them getting married seem scary!
Anyway when I saw my cousin, mother of the groom, walking down the aisle, I nearly cried at the look on her face – all the pride and joy coupled with the melancholy of “losing” her son. She’d told me recently that she’d been invited to a wedding when he was just a month old. She was nursing and not ready to leave him so long, so she’d only gone to the church, but she’d cried during the wedding at the thought that he’d one day get married and leave her. I related only too well as I watched her face and looked at the bride and groom (seeming so young and tiny that they could stand on their own wedding cake). Luckily, I was not held back down by the same hormones she would have been a month out or I would have bawled! I couldn’t help but think that that moment must have seemed only a moment ago to her and now here that vision was coming true. It would probably seem like only moments had passed when my own little one was growing up and going away and maybe even getting married.
The ceremony was beautiful and then we moved on to the party! My cousin was affiliated with the place where the reception was so she oversaw quite a lot of the preparations and was able to keep things going as long as they wanted (we left at midnight with things in full swing. I hear the festivities finally broke up around 3:30.). The bride (and to some extent the groom) was a vegetarian, so she’d decided to have a vegetarian (well, with fish) wedding. My favorite example of this was the “figs” in a blanket (my husband was so disappointed he’d misheard and thought hot dogs!). Overall the vegetarian option didn’t bother me (though I’m not a huge fish fan), but it clearly bothered some of the others at our table. The comments were so funny as many noted – you know, I don’t even eat meat every day, but now knowing I CAN’T have it! We were clearly seated with the carnivores!
The party was a lot of fun, though there was one interesting twist. My husband and I had joked at the Indian wedding that our culture was so “boring” as we had no cool traditions – clearly this bride and groom wanted to prove that wrong. Both had taken Irish step dance lessons as children as had their siblings (and some other cousins), so they got up to show off their moves – with an Irish folk band (another cousin) to accompany them! My husband watched and finally looked at me and said – you know, this is the ultimate white person dance – you don’t move your upper body at all!
Oh we are so culturally diverse and accepting…
Showing posts with label weddings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weddings. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married!
We’ve been to a couple of weddings this summer and seem to be running the gamut of cultural experiences – and attempting to run through babysitters as fast as we can! The first wedding was in May. It was a traditional Indian / Hindu wedding, which was a new experience for us, but very cool. We started with the parade / dancing in the street. Well, we didn’t dance too much. We look like idiots dancing when surrounded by other bad dancers – it’s awful to be among those with style! We could only get away with dancing at all as the groom is well known for being a really bad dancer, so we could just try to stand near him to deflect! Unfortunately, he doesn’t dance during the parade! So we did our best (tried to “screw in light bulbs,” as my friend puts it in describing the typical Indian dance hand motion) and then hid!
The groom’s parade finally rounded the corner and met the bride’s parade and the two were brought to each other to throw garlands around the neck of the other. Each is supposed to try to evade being caught in the string of flowers so they are lifted up by friends to be as tall as they can. As my husband is more than 6’3, he was pressed into service. He was also told that he would have to “protect the groom’s shoes.” For anyone who doesn’t know about this (like we didn’t!), apparently the bride’s family tries to steal the groom’s shoes during the wedding and then will ransom them (apparently they can demand quite a price – in the thousands! The groom has to pay it, as it is bad luck to lose them.). At first we thought this was a cool / interesting tradition. That was until after the garlands were tossed to catch bride and groom (my competitive husband made sure the groom got his on easily from his height) and the first scuffle for the shoes began. This consisted of someone kidney punching my husband in an attempt to make him drop the groom so that they could grab his shoes! This one was quickly broken up – as apparently you’re not really supposed to steal the shoes until the ceremony. I watched my once groom come out of it though and he was PISSED! He was totally controlling it, but apparently that hadn’t been a love tap on his back – he knew that they meant business!
He was therefore called into active duty again to guard the shoes during the ceremony – and apparently he’d gained some fame among the families at this point. People were congratulating him on the good job he’d done by name – oddly in the bathroom… I think they were expecting him to go into his full old football mode – possibly tackle the bride’s mother or body block her grandma. After the ceremony, everyone was on alert when the groom’s side realized that the bride’s side likely thought the backpack I was carrying held the shoes. It didn’t. It held my breast pump. They were happy for the decoy, though I began to wonder whether I’d be sacrificing a $300 pump for a $25 pair of shoes…
But amazingly the crowds retreated and it had all been a joke on the bride’s side. They had no real intention of stealing the shoes and instead presented the groom with a generous gift. On the one hand we were psyched that all had ended so peacefully, on the other – man, how anti-climactic!
We proceeded to the cocktail hour where everyone seemed to descend on the food after the long ceremony! Luckily I was a little slower in my tasting than my husband so that I didn’t down a whole fried jalepeno (the heat of this makes those poppers at Fridays look like nothing!)! He slowed after that… Unfortunately most of the food through the evening was a bit spicier than we were used to. It wreaked some havoc on our insides, but not too bad and I didn’t think much of it. Nope, didn’t think a thing of nursing the baby the next day or giving her the bottles I’d pumped that night. Not at all – not until the spitting up began….
She was like a machine. As much as I thought my stomach had suffered, hers was a hundred times worse (how do Indian babies do it?). We had unfortunately had to drive to NJ for a funeral the day after the wedding and were staying at my Mom’s (though she was out of town). So we were not as “stocked” as we normally are. She was managing to soak through every outfit I’d brought! One she puked on the second I’d gotten her into it! I had to hand her off to my husband then as I was starting to lose it. Only by the grace of God one of my Mom’s friends had dropped off a bag of baby clothes that day, so we were able to pull out the new stretchies to put her in. They were far too large, but better than nothing. It was a long night…
The groom’s parade finally rounded the corner and met the bride’s parade and the two were brought to each other to throw garlands around the neck of the other. Each is supposed to try to evade being caught in the string of flowers so they are lifted up by friends to be as tall as they can. As my husband is more than 6’3, he was pressed into service. He was also told that he would have to “protect the groom’s shoes.” For anyone who doesn’t know about this (like we didn’t!), apparently the bride’s family tries to steal the groom’s shoes during the wedding and then will ransom them (apparently they can demand quite a price – in the thousands! The groom has to pay it, as it is bad luck to lose them.). At first we thought this was a cool / interesting tradition. That was until after the garlands were tossed to catch bride and groom (my competitive husband made sure the groom got his on easily from his height) and the first scuffle for the shoes began. This consisted of someone kidney punching my husband in an attempt to make him drop the groom so that they could grab his shoes! This one was quickly broken up – as apparently you’re not really supposed to steal the shoes until the ceremony. I watched my once groom come out of it though and he was PISSED! He was totally controlling it, but apparently that hadn’t been a love tap on his back – he knew that they meant business!
He was therefore called into active duty again to guard the shoes during the ceremony – and apparently he’d gained some fame among the families at this point. People were congratulating him on the good job he’d done by name – oddly in the bathroom… I think they were expecting him to go into his full old football mode – possibly tackle the bride’s mother or body block her grandma. After the ceremony, everyone was on alert when the groom’s side realized that the bride’s side likely thought the backpack I was carrying held the shoes. It didn’t. It held my breast pump. They were happy for the decoy, though I began to wonder whether I’d be sacrificing a $300 pump for a $25 pair of shoes…
But amazingly the crowds retreated and it had all been a joke on the bride’s side. They had no real intention of stealing the shoes and instead presented the groom with a generous gift. On the one hand we were psyched that all had ended so peacefully, on the other – man, how anti-climactic!
We proceeded to the cocktail hour where everyone seemed to descend on the food after the long ceremony! Luckily I was a little slower in my tasting than my husband so that I didn’t down a whole fried jalepeno (the heat of this makes those poppers at Fridays look like nothing!)! He slowed after that… Unfortunately most of the food through the evening was a bit spicier than we were used to. It wreaked some havoc on our insides, but not too bad and I didn’t think much of it. Nope, didn’t think a thing of nursing the baby the next day or giving her the bottles I’d pumped that night. Not at all – not until the spitting up began….
She was like a machine. As much as I thought my stomach had suffered, hers was a hundred times worse (how do Indian babies do it?). We had unfortunately had to drive to NJ for a funeral the day after the wedding and were staying at my Mom’s (though she was out of town). So we were not as “stocked” as we normally are. She was managing to soak through every outfit I’d brought! One she puked on the second I’d gotten her into it! I had to hand her off to my husband then as I was starting to lose it. Only by the grace of God one of my Mom’s friends had dropped off a bag of baby clothes that day, so we were able to pull out the new stretchies to put her in. They were far too large, but better than nothing. It was a long night…
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