Last week one of our drivers came over to our place and personally invited each of us to come over to his son’s wedding.
As you can imagine, I got very excited! Little did I know.
There are at least 3 parts of every wedding in Bangladesh — common big party, bride’s part and groom’s party. I call it ‘party’, but only the first one can be somewhat close to it (I don’t know, I haven’t been to the first one).
Sharee is a traditional wear for this kind of events, so I decided to rock the one I had for the New Year. This is one of my house mates and me!
When we came, we were invited to have some food. At that time it was about 2pm.
The food was: rice, chicken curry, beef curry, lemons to all of it, cucumbers/tomatoes, some very sour drink (made of herbs and fermented) to help your digestion, and see the orange rice? this is dessert
We were given cutlery, but of course the locals eat with their right hand.
This is the apartment where 3 families live.We were sitting in the living room, and a son of one of the families is sleeping there. On the wall is the poster he got for his birthday. Unfortunately I couldn’t take more pictures, but got a picture of a toilet 🙂
Next we went to meet the bride. She looked scared and sad the whole time. I got a bit concerned about that, considering especially that it was her second time meeting her future husband’s family. And that she was from the village and he was from the city.
And after that we were apparently supposed to go home. That was it! That was the bride’s “party”. But luckily my sharee decided to unwrap.. Well, yes it was a bit embarrassing, because I was walking out of the apartment and felt how I was loosing my sharee and was being left just in my shorts. So all the ladies that were in that room run after me and brought me back to the apartment and rewrapped me in it.
Here it is necessary to mentioned, that I was doing everything totally wrong. First, you are supposed to wear a special skirt and a special top with your sharee. Since I didn’t have any of it I was just wearing shorts and the top I had. And second, like I was told later by my local friends, my sharee was only good to go to a park with a boyfriend, but far from being good enough for a wedding. So yeah, ignorance saved me from being embarrassed even more!
But it was the best part of the wedding. The ladies were super nice and sweet and helpful and didn’t even laugh at my shorts (although I believe the stories will be told…)
Do you see how much better this sharee fits? heh..
This is our driver’s wife
And this it the room where I was rewrapped and that was decorated to welcome the new weds!
As a final shot — the sharee I did myself and the one done by the local ladies
Ladies definitely knew what they were doing!