Weddingbee

Our mendhi party was held at my house in Orange County the Thursday before the wedding. My mendhi artist insisted that I get my mendhi done the night before the party to let it really set in and get dark before the wedding. This forced me to stop running around like a mad woman and actually relax. Nothing like getting henna put on for five hours to slow a person down. Lucky for me, my MOH, bridesmaid B, and one of my best friends from college were there to keep me company, and even take my contacts out. Yeah, I know gross. I forgot to take my contacts out beforehand, and with all the henna on my hands it was up to my friend to take them out. Lucky for me she’s an ophthalmologist, so I was in good hands.

Getting my mendhi applied. The paste was black but it dyes (temporarily) the skin a deep red color.

I had to sleep with the henna paste so my SIL tied plastic bags around my hands and feet. It was honestly the worst sleep I have ever gotten. Not to mention that we (my MOH and college friend) slept Willy Wonka-style, so my tossing and turning all night affected them too.
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It’s time to bring on the sponsors! Don’t worry, I don’t mean the commercial variety, but the personal kind (You didn’t think we were going to advertise to get free products at our wedding, did you?). Welcome to the madness that are Filipino bridal parties!

A traditional Filipino bridal party has much more than flower girls, ring bearers, bridesmaids and groomsmen (not to mention parents of the bride and groom, readers for the ceremony, ushers, siblings… those ‘hidden’ bridal party members!).
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Attention all: Mr. Mango is still alive.

I’ve been on sort of a hiatus from blogging because my Nikkah and Mehndi ceremonies were this past weekend. We had such a blast and I can’t wait to share the details with you all. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and give you a couple of sneak peeks into our Mehndi ceremony:

Ms. Mango’s hand after the henna artist had done her thing:

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Immediately following the ceremony, in lieu of a receiving line, Mr. Penguin and I opted to celebrate a little of my family heritage and participate in a Thai Water Ceremony, or Rod Nam Sang. Mr. Penguin and I both had Thai garb made down in Los Angeles, which cost us quite a bit of money, but we made my parents promise to throw us a Thai wedding in Thailand sometime in the next few years so we could break out the outfits once again! My parents were married here in California, but went back to Thailand when I was young to have a Thai wedding, so we hope to do the same very soon!

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While researching Polish traditions that we could potentially incorporate into the wedding, I stumbled across a fascinating book in the folklore section of my university library. I was pumped to see it had an entire section devoted to Polish wedding traditions. The excerpt I share below is definitely ancient and I have been assured by a few different Poles that no one does this anymore, but it’s so hilarious that I couldn’t resist sharing it with all of you.

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Pokładziny- The Bedding Down:
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While being from Pakistani-Muslim culture has its own unique benefits (ie. amazing food, outlandish music), culture and religion tend to impose a great hold on the way we are to celebrate getting married. I present the complexities of my culture:

1. Engagement

Something as simple as an engagement even demands a great deal of attention to cultural and religious factors.
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I’m armed with professional photos and finally ready to share the story of our wedding celebration: the mehndi, the wedding, our minimoon, the valima, and our honeymoon! I’m going to start with the story of our mehndi the night before the wedding. All mehndi photos were taken by family and friends.
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Our wedding celebration was to begin the Friday before the wedding with a mehndi at my parents’ house in Los Angeles. The Thursday before, I met my coordinator Angel for lunch and a pre-nuptial pow-wow. We laughed and chatted, but I barely touched my entree, which I chalked up to jitters. On the drive home, however, I started to feel extremely nauseated and I had to pull over. By the time I reached my parents’ home, I’d developed a high fever and spent the rest of the night alternating between my bed and the bathroom floor.

At this point, my parents were in a full-fledged panic. As they frantically wondered if they should somehow cancel or postpone the wedding events, they heard from my father-in-law, who is a physician. He wrote me a prescription for antibiotics, which quickly brought the fever down and appeased the nausea. I woke up the morning of my mehndi completely exhausted and weak, but at least I was keeping crackers and 7-UP down.

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As I’ve mentioned before, our wedding ceremony is going to be a combination of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. A few months ago, Mr. Margarita and I reviewed the details of our ceremonies/traditions and came up with an integrated ceremony. Buddhist ceremonies are about 30 minutes long, while some Hindu ceremonies can last for over two hours. Mr. Margarita and I, however, would like to keep our combined ceremony to 1.5 hours. It’s still a pretty lengthy ceremony so I am going to break it up into three posts.

Baraat
An important and festive component of the Hindu ceremony is the baraat, or arrival of the groom. The groom generally rides in on a decorated horse or elephant and is accompanied by his family members, relatives and friends in big procession with dhol player(s), and dancing.

Mr. Margarita will actually be riding in on a elephant from Have Trunk Will Travel. Mr. Margarita’s younger cousin (if he will cooperate) will also be riding the elephant.

Image courtesy of Andrena Photography

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Mr. Caramel and I debated a few times on whether or not we wanted to do the traditional Korean ceremony.  We kept thinking that we would do it for the few relatives traveling from Korea to see us get married. But after going to my cousin’s traditional Korean ceremony and seeing the big headache of arranging a whole other event on top of the wedding– we basically said “heck no, please.”  Our parents were okay with whatever we wanted to do–they knew that we weren’t very traditional so they left the decision to us. (Yeah lucky us we had very non-demanding parents!)

At the last moment we decided to have one if we only invited very close family members. We held it at my parents’ house and it ended up being only about 25 people, which was perfect for us! It wasn’t crazy and it was comfortable and pretty painless. The whole thing took about 30 minutes and we got to eat delicious food afterwards! Plus we made a lot of extra money, which was helpful for our honeymoon.

If anyone is teetering on the idea of a traditional ceremony, I would really have to say that I’m glad we did it. You only get married once in your life– what’s one more thing? Plus you have pictures to remember the event and it might mean a lot to your relatives. We even got to tweak things around to make it more comfortable and less stressful.

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When I was in Shanghai in the Spring, I made a point to stop by Chang Le Lu, which is notorious for custom qipao tailors. I wish I had taken pictures of the all the beautiful designs. I was surprised with all the modern variations, and many were so elegant– I could have started a complete qipao wardrobe.

I had visited a few qipao shops in New York’s Chinatown with my mom before I left for the trip, and she was adamant about having a dragon and phoenix design… because that’s just what you do for weddings! When you want to know why, just defer to Wikipedia!

The Fenghuang (phoenix) has very positive connotations. It is a symbol of high virtue and grace. The Fenghuang also symbolizes the union of yin and yang. It appears in peaceful and prosperous times but hides when trouble is near. In ancient China, they can often be found in the decorations for weddings or royalty, along with dragons. This is because the Chinese considered the dragon and phoenix symbolic of blissful relations between husband and wife, another common yin and yang metaphor.
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