Wedding!

I haven't had much free time so I am a little late writing about this, but last week I had the awesome opportunity to go to a Beit Sahour-style bachelorette party (you could call it that) and then the wedding itself the next day- both celebrated in the Greek Orthodox fashion. The party beforehand was for all women, so I went with Tata Huda and Nawal (Shorok's mother). There were women and young girls sitting on chairs in a horseshoe shape facing the front of the room, which had a table with a chair on top of it for the bride. Someone began to play the tabalah (a small drum) and a few women got up and danced in a circle and sang. Tata Huda was dancing from the moment we walked in the door.

We danced until the bride came in and assumed her perch on top of the table. She wore a long prom-like blue dress with lots of makeup and an elaborate hairdo. I don't know her personally, but she is Jiries' goddaughter, she's 21 years old (my age ah!). From the chair on top of the table she watched as everyone sang and clapped and danced around. After an hour or so some of the elderly women left and came back with huge buckets of some dough-like substance and huge coca-cola bottles of yellowish brown liquid. They set it all up on a table in front of the bride and using their bare hands they mashed it together to make henna. Then they smoothed it out in a dish, decorated it with flowers, and then took turns carrying it above their heads and singing songs to the bride. By they I mean the elderly women of the family plus some of the important women, like the bride's mother and sisters. At the same time they chanted traditional songs wishing the bride good luck. We left early because we were going to visit Rawan, so Tata Huda put a huge chunk of the henna in a plastic bag to bring home.










Tata Huda's sister!:

Later that night when Tat Huda went to bed (around 9:00 ish) she scooped up a handful of it and then slept with her fist clenched around it. At the time I wasn't really sure what she was doing and there were still several hours before I was thinking of going to bed so I did not use the henna myself (it is an overnight process). This is what Tata Huda's hand looked like the next day, it will stay like this for 5 more days or so:

The next day was the wedding. It was held at the Church of the Nativity, which is the church that was built over the grotto where Jesus was born. It was really beautiful and lots of lucky tourists passing through got to watch the ceremony. There was a party with food and dancing that night, it was a LOT of fun. I think for the most part the pictures are self-explanatory, and they tell a beautiful story all by themselves without any commentary.

















Also- thank you for some of the very nice comments that have been posted (on the blog entries). My computer doesn't notify me when someone posts one, so I kind of just found them all. Thank you everyone!