We went to Amy and

We went to Amy and Omid's wedding on Saturday. It was at the Miller-Crockett House just south of the river. Amy wanted the wedding to be a traditional persian Aghd ceremony, since Omid is originaly from Iran. The ceremony was actually performed by Omid's borther who got ordained for the occasion on the internet. The persian wedding is filled with lots of traditions and symbolisms. There's is the usual: gold coins for prosperity, eggs for fertility, sugar for joy and hapiness, etc. But also the unusual but rather neat: a needle with seven threads to (figuratively) sew up the mother-in-law's lips!

The other cool thing about the wedding was that, although it officially started at 6pm, the ceremony wasn't scheduled until 6:30 (the invitation didn't mention it) so there were no late stragglers. Of course, we were actually early for once in our lifes. Also, they had an open bar which did open at 6 so people were a little mellow by the time the wedding started. They had a persian band and a DJ, so there was a lot of traditional (handkerchief are a crucial accessory) as well as pop dancing. The music was neat, I like the middle-eastern scales (I love classical spanish music for the same reason) and Jennifer and I got to do a pretty neat samba.

Jennifer wants to go with a traditional catholic wedding, so we probably won't be able to copy all that much :-)

BTW, I've been to another persian wedding about ten years ago, that of my college friend Shiva Eslami. It was similar except that we first had to go to a baptist ceremony (groom) and beside the aghd there was also a muslim ceremony in arabic. Three very different ceremonies in three very different languages! At the reception there was a wave of her relatives dancing when the persian music came on, and a wave of his relatives dancing when the country-western stuff came on. Quite the mutlicultural experience.