The Wedding

I finally relaxed once I got to my friend May’s house . My heart had been racing the entire 90 minute train ride. Why? Well, I was afraid I would miss my stop; I was nervous about going to a new city and meeting new people all by myself; and I was worried I might do something culturally inappropriate at the wedding and embarrass my new friend. However, the sweetness of the girl that met me at the train station calmed me down almost immediately and I felt at ease for the rest of my stay there.

That afternoon I sat around in the living room greeting guests while May got some beauty treatment done. (They used some kind of sugar mixture to remove ALL the hair from her body). Once it was dark she got dressed up in a traditional Tunisian wedding dress. (This was just the second night of the wedding, the third night is the night she gets her make-up and hair done, and wears a beautiful white wedding dress).

Once she was all dressed up in many heavy and stiff layers of clothing we headed downstairs to her uncles house where roughly forty women were waiting. There a DJ played some music while she danced a little and showed off her traditional clothes and the henna dye on her hands. Then all the women started dancing. (The men were upstairs doing something else).

 

After a few hours of dancing, mingling, and eating sweets people started to go home. At the end of the night some people complained about the untraditional music (I guess a DJ isn’t traditional) and four women argued over which of their sons I was going to marry. I didn’t understand what was going on but I was told later that they decided I would meet their sons the following night and decide for myself who I would marry. Luckily, I couldn’t stay for the last night of the wedding.