Monday, July 12, 2010

Bridal Espionage

Now every wedding I attend, I feel like I'm doing research. So when my cousin asked me if I would be her date to a wedding that her husband couldn't attend last minute because of his new job, I jumped at the chance!

I really wish I had taken pictures. I really really do. Because this wedding was an EXPERIENCE. It was outside of Washington DC, and about a 2 hr drive or so from my cousin's house. And the drive would have been magnificent had it not been for her amazing, adorable, wonderful little boy who is in the worst mood of the century. He's teething, so if you look at him wrong: TEMPER TANTRUM!!! Oddly enough, he was only a little monster in the car. In the church he was great and he slept through most of the reception.

The ceremony was beautiful. Quiet little church at a preparatory school. The bridesmaids all wore purple, but all different dresses. And not the same pruple, either. I think the bride said "just buy a purple dress... I dont care what color or what it looks like." And that had been my attitude earlier, but now I'm happy that I decided to have everyone in whatever pattern of the 5 they choose, but the same color.

We get to the reception, and the escort cards were on lollipops! The big multcolored flat ones? Very cute idea. Don't know if I'll steal it, but very cute idea. And the bride and groom had a guest book made that had pictures on it. All of her aunts, uncles, and cousins had their own page with pictures from THEIR weddings. That's really cute for a small family, but I have 28 aunts and uncles... and 4 cousins who are married. That's 32 pages of guest book for JUST my family. No thank you!

When we get to our table... there was a menu sitting at our seat. And the menu was not in English. The groom is Ethiopian. So we had Ethiopian traditional food for dinner. Basically we had this special flat bread called injera that kind of looked like a sponge. You roll out the injera on your plate, and fill your plate with various foods. There were 2 kinds of chicken, 2 kinds of beef, and lamb... plus 2 vegetable dishes. And this crushed wheat with butter. All traditional Ethiopian foods. The beef and lamb kind of looked like hamburger helper. And the way you eat the food is you tear off little pieces of the injera and pick up bites of the other dishes, and you eat with your hands. It was really tasty...except that it tasted like everything had been marinating in jalapenos and habeneros and any other kind of OMG MOUTH ON FIRE spices. My throat felt like it was on fire. Even the wheat with butter (which I thought was going to be totally safe) was HOLY CRAP FIRE. And my vodka made it burn more... and the water didn't help. So I was totally screwed. Luckily, there was also lasagna! So I had mostly lasagna.

When it was time to start dancing, there was this tribal-sounding music, and these two people in costume came in and did a dance for the couple. Actually they did about 10 dances, and each dance had its own costume. Some of the grooms family knew some of the dances, so they were all joining in. It was very cool! I don't think I'm going to steal it for my wedding, but it was very cool!

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