Gettin' Fancy

Recently we were able to enjoy some traditional wedding festivities here and it was so much fun. Sam’s friend invited us to her mehendi ceremony and wedding reception. We were very excited to see the events and see the bride all dressed up in the traditional outfit. Of course we also got to get dressed up, which Atticus is particularly a fan of.

Getting dressed up for a traditional ceremony here means that Sam must wear a sari, and Jon and Atticus can choose to either wear the Punjabi suit or a western suit. We asked around regarding which was most appropriate and for the mehendi ceremony, Jon and Atticus wore their Punjabi suits and for the wedding they wore suits. It was fortunately the correct combination- at the mehendi ceremony everyone had Punjabis on and at the wedding everyone had on suits. Whew- another local social-norm test passed.

So, before we get to the actual events, we thought we’d share a little of our befuddlement at the proportions of fancy ‘deshi clothes. You may or may not already know that the sari is basically a really long piece of fabric that is wrapped, tucked and pinned in a confusing jumble of pleats and drapes into a petticoat underneath. Sam can’t actually do it herself and every time she needs to dress up she has to go downstairs to our landlord’s apartment where his mom or sister helps her put it on. Sometimes, such as the case of the wedding reception, they also get really excite a offer to do Sam's makeup, loan her jewelry, purses (oh, sorry- "party clutch"), etc - basically, they try their damnedest to make Sam into an acceptable Bangladeshi woman- lots of makeup and lots of bling. Sam has yet to allow the makeup, but this most recent time she did get loaded up with jewelry and it worked out ok. The bracelet was was pretty hardcore.

For Jon and Atticus, the traditional Punjabi pants came as a bit of a surprise. They are cut just like the skinny pants that go under kameezes that Sam sometimes wears and we just still haven't figured out the logic of the design. The top is really really big, with a drawstring waste, and the bottoms taper down to ultra-skinny. They are worn at about 2 or 3 inches below the nipple. The Punjabi top itself is fine- it is basically a big tunic, and once it covers the pants it looks nice, but the pants on their own are really something.

Of course, once we figure out how to wear the clothes, we clean up ok.

Atticus of course loves his Punjabi and looks adorable in it. He also loves his shirt and tie though, which he also looks great in. Basically, he likes whenever things get fancy- so both the mehendi ceremony and the wedding were a real treat for him.

We arrived at the mehendi ceremony about twenty minutes late, so naturally we were almost the first people there. We should have known to show up an hour late and we would have still been early. Anyhow, we got to check out the nice decorations of the banquet hall. In true Bangladesh style too, no event hall would be complete without a graphic depiction of the 1971 genocide.

About two hours later things got started. We didn’t completely know what was going on all the time, but basically the bride and groom arrive separately and walk in covered by a marigold thing over them and head toward the stage.

Then they sit on the stage and everyone takes pictures of them and some people feed them. The mehendi ceremony is when the bride gets the traditional henna applied to her hands and we assume that several hours into it the mehendi actually happened (because she did have beautiful mehendi done at the actual wedding reception) but by about two and half hours in, we had gotten a few photos, sat around, had our pre-ceremony snacks, and realized our camera battery wasn’t charged, so we had little reason to stick around longer. We knew the dinner would likely be meat, so we ducked out a little early and headed home. We did stay long enough to hear the band play though – and of course, we were delighted to see that band was a group of teenage and twenty something year old boys singing Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”. (One of the boys was the bride’s nephew, so maybe this was a bit of charity gig!)

Here are the bride and groom on the stage- those are all real flowers strung together in the background too.

And here's a creepy picture of Sam and Atticus at the snack stand:


The wedding reception was actually a lot more fun than the mehendi ceremony. For one, we knew people at the wedding since there was other IUB faculty there and we were able to hang out with them. The reception was held at the golf club by our house and so it wasn’t a long journey to get to it (especially nice, since earlier traffic had made our trip to the liquor store take over two hours!). And of course, even though we forced ourselves to get the a little late we were still some of the first to arrive. The hall was huge, and it reflects the increasing elaborateness and size of wedding ceremonies as the middle and upper classes acquire more and more wealth they need to spend.

Here are a few pictures that start to capture the volume of lights outside of the event hall at the golf course:

Here are Atticus and Sam marvelling at the venue . They are prbably saying something like, "Whoah dude, this place is REAL fancy-like."

Similar to the other ceremony, this one involved the bride and groom coming in and then sitting on a little stage where everyone takes photos of them. Then a religious guy says a prayer, food is served (meaty biryani for everyone else of course- but we had plain rice), and everyone leaves. It was actually funny, because even though the affair seemed so big and the venue was so fancy, it is kind of low-key. You come, take photos, eat and then take off. Once you take your picture, the bride and groom are actually kind of secondary. Atticus took a ton of photos and had a blast taking part in the photo sessions. Between this and the recent boat trip, we have quite a budding photographer on our hands. Here are some pictures from the night.

This is the stage before the bride and groom arrive - this guy totally owns it by the way.

Here is the bride (she is supposed to look sad in order to symbolize leaving her family behind). Check out the awesome mehendi on her hands.

Here are the bride and groom together (he shows up a little after she does).

The major point of the night seems to be to take your picture with the bride and or groom, so here are Sam and Atticus with some other friends from IUB doing the obligatry group shots (there were a lot of these...).

We caught a ride home with our friends who had a taxi waiting for them. Actually that was a fun moment too- all the fancy cars of all these really well off guests come inching forward one by one to pick up the guests and right in the middle is a beat up yellow taxi- that’s ours! It wasn’t like we were rolling with the lowlifes- we were with another visiting professor from the US and the dean of the social sciences – we guess we were all just more enlightened than to buy into the obvious displays of conspicuous consumption. We are sure the dean of the business school does have his own car though.

All in all, we had a great time, Atticus had tons of fun, let his shyness fall aside and got to experience a lot of new things. Here is a shot that shows how excited he was for the groom to arrive - what can we say? The kid loves a wedding.