Wednesday, 19 June 2019
A Hindu wedding isn’t just a one-day affair. In fact, Moh and Sharon’s wedding went on for five. Now, not the actual wedding but the events surrounding the wedding and each with its own significance. I’d been to Avi’s wedding back in February and that was an Indian Muslim wedding so I wasn’t sure how much similarity there would be. The answer is – a bit. They use a lot of the same words, anyway, but they do them a bit differently.
The M&S Wedding was spread over the five days as: Mendhi night, Maticoor night, the wedding, the reception, and the Kangan. So each blog post will be about one of these and then I’ll link one to the other.
We went to Moh’s house on Tuesday, the 18th June. Moh lives in the home that he grew up in, since he bought the house when his parents moved further out of Toronto. So the house is familiar. He’s done a bunch of work to smarten it up and it shows. Moh put us both to work immediately, Krish applying film to the basement windows and me steaming some huge table cloths for the reception. And he said ‘Naomi’ was on her way. Naomi is Krish’s cousin and very close to Moh. I liked her right away. She turned up with her husband, Rana, and Krish’s dad. A full house already and we were planted in Krish’s old bedroom. That’s a strange feeling, since I knew it from before. It’s a lot tidier now!
Everything was nice. We had some food, we chatted, and it felt like we’d all known each other for years and years. I love when that happens!
The next day more work but that evening Naomi and I got dressed for the Mendhi night at Sharon’s family home. I’d arrived in Toronto with five outfits for the five wedding days. My wardrobe has never looked so fancy.
Sharon’s family lives in Woodbridge, which is just north west of Toronto. When we arrived, there were giant ceramic elephants in the driveway and family members were sitting in deckchairs on the drive and in the open garage. Someone told me to go to the tent in the back garden to get my mendhi done but when I arrived, there was quite a queue, so instead I went to get food from the large containers on tables in the garage. Continue reading “Sharon and Mohan’s wedding – Mendhi Night”