Supreet and Sangita's wedding

Following three mad weeks of preparations, Supreet and Sangita's wedding went off without any noticeable hitches.  In fact, the whole thing turned out to be rather magnificent.

The religious ceremony was last Thursday morning, beginning at the auspicious hour of 6:30am.  It was held on the roof terrace of Sapna and Rabi's house.  It was my first Hindu wedding and I watched in fascination as the priest laid out the preparations for the multitude of pujas (religious rites) that occur during the ceremony.  The ceremony itself lasted about four hours and was a joyous, colourful, messy affair, with various powders, flowers and liquids being scattered as part of the pujas.  I understood relatively little of what was going on (even Sapna couldn't explain all the symbolism) but it was fun to watch nonetheless.  The whole thing seemed to me to be rather informal, with the forty or so guests coming and going throughout and the family joking with the priest.  Below are the happy couple during a brief break in the ceremony, the once meticulously arranged offerings by this point looking rather less immaculate.

After the ceremony, there was the official meeting of the two families and gifts were exchanged.  Then downstairs for drinks, lunch and more drinks which lasted until the early evening.  I must admit that I made myself pretty scarce for much of the afternoon.  I still wasn't feeling well and was finding the crowd a little intimidating.  I used the moments by myself to speak to a friend back home and write a long letter to my parents and I think that was the turning point when I started to feel more perky after a few days of being just shy of my usual chirpy self.

The next night was the wedding party and therefore the opportunity to dress-up in my new finery.  Here it is, folks:

The photo doesn't do justice to the embroidery and bead-work of the kurta (top) but does amply show of just how much the surwal (trousers) resemble clown pants!  Nor can you really see the jewellery or admire the heals in which I am somehow managing to stand.  But you get the overall effect.  I got so many compliments on the outfit all night and I lapped every one of them up.

The party was held poolside at the beautiful Dwarika's Hotel, which has won a Heritage Award for rescuing traditional Nepali wood carving and terracotta work and superbly integrating them into the hotel buildings.

I should note that I'd been to a couple of wedding parties with Sapna and Rabi in the past month at two different hotels and was surprised to find the identical buffet at each - there is a typical 'wedding menu'.  Since it is now an auspicious season for weddings, guests are being subjected to the same boring meal over and over again.  Not so at Sapna and Supreet's wedding.  The traditional Newari buffet was spectacularly good.  In this, and all other respects, this wedding totally outclassed the other two.  It was far more stylish even than the wedding we went to at the Yak and Yeti, supposedly the smartest hotel in town.  

What made the party so much fun for me, at least, was that, unlike the previous wedding parties, I had a number of friends there.  The teachers from MotherCare and the staff of Rabi's company, Sacred Summits, were all invited.  Maggie was also there, visiting from England (Maggie, if you remember from a much earlier post, is the reason I'm in Nepal at all.  It was her charity work that inspired me to come here and it is she who is a mutual friend of my family and Sapna and Rabi).  It was great to see her.

The evening stretched into the night and long after most of the guest had gone, the stalwart core group (including myself) was still drinking cocktails in the bar.  Here's a photo from that stage the night.  Left to right: Sangita, Sapna, Jyotsna (a friend of Sangita's from Delhi) and me.

Sapna was particularly drunk.  Thankfully she is a happy drunk.  She is also a bossy drunk and, once we got home, insisted that beer MUST be consumed.  That was at 2am and I was seriously flagging but there was no escape!  Sapna, Rabi, Jyotsna (who was staying here) and I stayed up chatting and drinking for another hour or so.  During that time Sapna declared that I was '8 out of 10'.  Apparently that's pretty damn good.  The last girl who stayed only rated 1.5.  I finally made it to bed at 3am, tired but happy.  Just don't ask me how I felt the next morning.