Wedding invite said wedding starts at 8:30AM. No, not a typo, really that early in the morning. It was brutal getting up that early and dressed for the occasion. Boys were a bit tired as they has stayed out till 3:30am

At least it gave me some time to take pix of the converted country club.

Turns out, we didn’t need to be there that early, but we were the only ones who didn’t know that. There were a few ceremonies that took place. First was Raj riding in on a horse. Literally! All the men danced and cheered him on during the procession.

 There was a lot of hero worship, for lack of a better term, for the groom. He was treated like royalty. He was certainly king for a day (although Raj has apparently always thought of himself as a king)

While all eyes are still on the groom, the bride enters under a canopy held by the bridal party. Took awhile for anyone to notice her. That didn’t settle too well for Alison and me.

 The “alter” was as ornate as it gets. They sat up there with the priest and the bride’s father in not a lot of clothing. Kind of a loin cloth and topless. Not sure the significance of that. Almost everyone (except us, of course) was in traditional Indian garb, including westerners.

After some chanting and candle ceremonies, they moved to a swing in the corner of the room. More candles and more singing.

Then back to the “alter” where the bride sits on her father’s lap. Then she goes to change into another sari.

This ceremony had the bride and groom lifted in the air and try to lei each other.

Interesting thing about this 3 ½ hour wedding is that you don’t have to sit in your seat and be quiet. People move around, chat, come and go. Which is very considerate seeing that it’s a 3 ½ hour wedding!!!!

Evening reception, according to Raj, is just like a Western wedding one, but with a lot of Indians. That was the case. Interestingly, the women continued to dress in traditional garb, while the Indian men dressed in suits.

Here are all of us together:

The ballroom was magnificent for the morning, and even more so for the evening. The DJ announced the wedding party to applause. The bride and groom entered and immediately had their first dance and cut the cake. We thought this was very expedient and thought things would progress pretty quickly so we could start eating.

Then there were the toasts. And more toasts. And toasts that needed translating. One of the bride’s classmates in med school was one creepy dude. He has a white wife, who had to have been pissed at his speech. He sounded like such a lovelorn stalker, it was ridiculous. He praised her like she was the love of his life. Even insisted she be his daughter’s godmother (guess he wanted to keep her close). It was awkward, weird and creepy.

However, our bud Chung followed him which lightened the mood tremendously.