White Wedding (Part 2 of more than 2)

If you missed part one, find it here.

I never had the pleasure/disappointment of going on a blind date. Apparently none of my friends ever thought to themselves "you know who would be perfect for Luke, this girl." Ok, maybe they thought it, but they never bothered to put any of those thoughts into action. So if you're reading this and you thought that at one point, thanks for nothing, jerks.

However, from what I understand, there is pretty much one of two ways it can go. Either you really enjoy yourself and find yourself clicking with what was until earlier in the night a complete stranger, or you're looking at your watch and answering text messages during dinner and finding any excuse possible to end the date before whatever activity you'd planned commences.

That was kind of how I looked at going to my brother's Hindu wedding. I didn't know what to expect, but I figured it was either going to be lots of fun, or I was going to find myself saying "I need to go check on my son" a lot during the night. Fortunately for me, it was the former and not the latter. With that said, let's begin the recap, going Brent Musburger style.

"You are looking live" at the blog I wrote while the Thursday night party was still raging. One of the drawbacks to having a kid who goes to bed early is that either myself or my wife has to spend time in the hotel room with him while he sleeps while the other, to quote our favorite Hindu character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, "parties like it's on sale for $19.99." 

Fortunately for us, the little guy decided to stay up late, so we both got to see the beginnings of the party. Now to be completely honest, I'm not sure if what I saw tonight was a party or a religious ceremony, or both. We (by which I mean myself, Yes Dear, my kid, my parents and grandmother) were the only non-Indian people in attendance, which had its drawbacks, but also meant we could pretty much do whatever we wanted and then say "I'm sorry, I didn't know."


Anyway, the event kicked off around 6:15 with what is apparently called a Garba. Basically all the women do different kinds of dances in a circle. It's possible this symbolizes something. It's possible it's an excuse for the guys to gawk at the women (the majority of whom were wearing Saris.) (My wife's coworker wanted to come to the wedding because, as he said, "there will be lots of hot Indian women in Saris.") Either way, they danced, and danced, and danced. Now I'm no expert on Hindu weddings, but I'm assuming the dancing is the equivalent of what would happen if the Irish did the Riverdance prior to a wedding ceremony.

The dancing continued for roughly two hours before dinner was served. I'd been warned by both my brother and mother that the food is very spicy and that, odds were, I wouldn't like it. Because of that, we stopped at Zaxby's before we got to the event. There was a vast array of different types of food there that looked really good. However, a few bites of most of it left me longing for the non-spicy food of my unrefined palate. 


As I was leaving to take my shift with the little guy, one of my brother's soon-to-be relatives asked me if I was going to dance. I politely informed her that I hadn't had enough to drink yet and she told me I'd better drink up, because after dinner was what is known as the dandia raas, which is some form of dance involving involving the sticks you learned to keep rhythm with when you were in third grade. I'm assuming that's going on as I write this. I'm watching the end of the Cubs first win of 2010. On the plus side, I did drink up in preparation for writing this blog.

More to come tomorrow night as we move to Greenville, S.C. for night three or four (I'm not sure how long this goes, but it's a lot longer than a rehearsal dinner and a wedding ceremony/reception.) Be sure to tune in tomorrow night for more riveting coverage of Hindu Wedding 2010 - This Time It's Personal.

And as always, "thank you, come again."