Mint tea and cookies.: Rule #71: No excuses. Play like a champion.

So it is wedding season and I'm taking full advantage of some free meals and meeting people in my community. Last week I went to two weddings, one was my neighbors and the other was my host aunt's brother I think...some how he was related? but they were really cool and COMPLETELY different from the wedding I went to in my training village in the south (now I live up north in a village where people identify as Arab as oppose to Berber so they're traditions are different). So here's the set up:

day/night before the wedding the bride gets really intricate henna on her hands and feet
the evening of the wedding dance around, listen to music, wear some fancy clothes, wait for wedding to begin
around midnight you eat dinner - first dish is chicken and olives and the second is lamb and prunes
after dinner, if you're at the brides house you wait for the groom and his family to arrive with flowers/music/procession to bring her and her family to the real wedding at the groom's house - if you're at the grooms house you wait for the bride to arrive with her family.
once the bride gets there she sits in a thing (picture below) and people pick her up and do a dance
then the bride and groom sit and people take pictures with them and everyone dances
the bride changes outfits through the night - usually she gets there in a white dress, then green, pink, gold and purple
dance/eat/sit all night until 6 am
bride and groom make it official by feeding eat other dates and drinking milk
go to sleep until noon, eat lunch, see the brides new outfit and then the wedding is over

the weddings are all through the night so you need a lot of soda to not crash, but its cool to see the sunrise and hang out and dance. there are a lot of weddings going on right now because there are none during Ramadan.