The other day I was talking to my sister and since it was morning in Bahrain and evening in California she asked, “What are you doing today?” I thought through my mental schedule and replied, “In the afternoon we have a birthday party at the rugby club and this evening we have an Indian wedding reception to go to. What does your Saturday look like?” She said, “Oh, we’re going to a Korean smorgasbord.”
“Really?!” I asked (cause how interesting does that sound?). “No,” she replied dryly. “We are going to baseball tryouts with all of the other white people in Orange County.” When I stopped laughing (and finished wiping the tears from my eyes) I said, “My life really isn’t that exotic.” She quipped back, “You can’t fool me. I read your blog.”
Ok, so maybe it sounds a little exotic. But in real life our life feels pretty ordinary. First of all, getting ready for our formal event included all the ordinary frustrations — like not being able to find shoes or socks. Caleb ended up wearing orange athletic socks with his black hand me down suit and blue tie (Calvin’s castoff from Wendy’s wedding 4 years ago. That suit is still giving back). And of course he didn’t have dress shoes so he wore his least banged up running shoes. I didn’t want to wear heels so I was debating between flats and boots up until the last minute. At 5:40 Josh started yelling at us that we were going to be late. See, totally ordinary!
I pointed out that it was an Indian wedding reception in the Middle East and the odds of that combination being timely was next to zero. I was convinced that we could arrive 45 minutes late and still be one of the first people there, but I zipped up my boots and headed to the car. We got there within 5 minutes of the time on the invite and sure enough, there was one table seated with a large family, another table with 2 couples from our church, the 5 of us, and an entire room full of empty tables. Uh, huh. So much for being late.
45 minutes later it still hadn’t filled in much and I laughed inside when the MC said, “it’s great to see a crowd here with many more on the way. I wonder what is keeping them — the traffic, the weather?” Um, maybe because this entire country runs on inshallah time? The bride and groom hadn’t arrived yet either so it’s not like the latecomers were truly late yet, but the MC did open the buffet line so in this case, it paid to be early.
The bride and groom arrived while we were finishing up dinner. She wore a white dress, just like you’d see in the US and the groom was in a tux. Not exotic at all. It was a very nice, very sweet wedding reception, just like you’d have in the US. Except that the MC, because of his Indian accent, called the groom “Juan” all night because that is how “Vaughn” is pronounced if you’re from India I guess. It was enough to have me giggling all night, especially because Josh kept saying, “yeah Juan” under his breath.
