Mehndi lagah ke rakhna

With my hands covered in mehndi, I write the first of this series of posts. My regular blog will go on a short hiatus so I can try to capture my brother-in-law Fahad's wedding and give you guys a look into the mysterious and amazing phenomenon  of south asian weddings.

This is my first BIG wedding where I have been a part of the family. To understand any desi wedding you have to know what hungama is. Think madness. Think chaos. And then dip it into chocolate and put some sprinkles on it. That is wedding hungama. 

Today was day one of the official hungama. I flew in from Buffalo late last night and this morning, my mom who had been sleeping over helped me attack the big task of packing for the wedding. Somehow I got four days of wedding outfits into a carry on. I probably deserve some sort of medal for this. 

Then all seven of us gathered in two cars and started our journey. I don't know if you have ever traveled with a group of seven people but you feel SO desi. You are thinking that everyone in the airport is staring at you and thinking you just stepped off some boat somewhere and you are probably right. I wanted to put a turban on Fahad and make him sing songs so everyone would know there was a wedding going on.

When we arrived to Dallas we had a huge party awaiting us and they showered us with flowers and candies. I loved this family already! We managed to settle ourselves into the hotel soon after that. At the hotel, there were delicious nuts, cookies, croissants and fruit baskets in all of our rooms. Also, there were some fresh flowers. Feraz and I decided that we could get used to living like this. 

We had a short time to settle in before we had to head over to Lubna's house for our first full introduction to the family at a dinner they were hosting. We arrived quite late since our flight didn't even get in til 8 or so. There was mehndi being put on all over and the house was decorated with yellows and greens. I went upstairs and met my new sister-in-law to be for the first time! She was getting her mehndi put on and the lady was going at an incredible pace! I think she finished the whole thing in two hours. There are times when the bride's mehndi can take all night to put on! 

We spent the evening getting to know the family and Lubna and eating lots of delicious foods. We all had henna put on our hands and afterwards all the women got together and sang traditional Indian wedding songs. As I have done since I was a young child, I sat along and mouthed random songs pretending I was singing along even though I had no clue what the song was. 

So, that is day one of four. Three more days of wedding fun left in Texas!!