India Continued: Weddings and bright lights
Wednesday was the second day of the wedding and the actual wedding ceremony. This part of the wedding took place at a very nice Delhi hotel. We showed up and some of Josh’s family lit off a batch of fireworks on the hotel driveway. Unfortunately they didn’t warn anyone they were going to do this so Scott and I were temporarily blinded by a flurry of something related to the fireworks hitting our eyes. Vision eventually returned after a few minutes so all was well. After the fireworks show, the guests moved into the hotel.
I like how Indian weddings are set up – at least I this one. The wedding area actually consisted of two areas – an inside (and air conditioned) room with caterers serving drinks. Outside this room was a patio area where the actual wedding ceremony took place. The patio had a canopy where the couple would sit along with a Hindu holy man (terminology?) and his assistant (?). Around the canopy were pillows for guests to sit down and watch the ceremony. The ceremony was quite long so people drifted between the patio and inside. It was all very informal – for the guests anyway. During the ceremony people would move in close for a few pictures, head inside for a drink or two, then come back out and watch some more of the ceremony. Side conversations were going on throughout – both indoors and outdoors. After the ceremony was complete everyone headed to a dining room downstairs for a tasty buffet. Food is a very important part of an Indian wedding, which was all good by me – I was in heaven eating Indian food for 10 days. All the food, especially this evening, was exceptional.
One of the more annoying parts of the wedding was the camera crew who were at all the events. The camera crew wasn’t so much the problem as the “burn your retina to a crisp” spotlight on the video camera. These guys had managed to strap a large industrial halogen light to the top of the camera. There is no doubt in my mind that if aliens ever come to earth it will be because they will see this camera spotlight hundreds of light-years away – most likely blinding half of them in the process. I’m sure some guy in the International Space Station was like, “why the heck is there a bright light that keeps coming on around Delhi?” The portable supernova also necessitated the crew to walk around with a 100’ extension cord plugged into a wall outlet – because I’m sure even a car battery would only be able to power this bad-boy for about 10 milliseconds. I would love to see the video this camera took. I’m sure every segment had people giving a classic “deer caught in the headlights” pose. I know that’s the pose I gave because it was the only pose I could give – I couldn’t see anything else but that light. After the first night I seriously considered wearing sunglasses to all future events. A fair portion of the various wedding events consisted of me trying to avoid the camera crew. I felt bad for Liz and Josh. Hopefully their vision was not permanently impaired.
