Wedding Extravaganza

I went to a wedding this weekend that was some sort of elaborate Arabic style catholic wedding. As I watched the ceremony I began thinking of David Letterman's top 10 lists and posting a blog entry about the top things that stood out as different than you average run of the mill wedding. So there they are:

1) George & Kay's Wedding Day: The Musical
The strangest part of the wedding was how the priests (?), all 3 of them, broke out into song during a large part of the ceremony. And after every line they sang, some woman in the back would repeat this one line as if to add a sort of chorus to the song. I also felt from the monotone chant feel of the singing that I was being hypnotized into some sort of religious brainwashing (isn't that redundant?)

2) The Staredowns
After breaking out into a song, or after a spoken part of the ceremony, the string quartet off to the side would play a song and the priests would just stand there looking at the bride & groom. What these little timeouts from the ceremony were all about I had no idea. I think it was to draw out an already long ceremony, or to punish those of us in the audience for being so late. (We were thinking we'd be late showing up barely 5 minutes before the start of the wedding but walked in to see only Laura's parents ahead of us. The bride didn't even show up until 20 after!)

3)The Tiaras
Midway through the ceremony, the priests broke out what I thought to myself looked just like tiaras. Both the bride and groom each got to wear these silly looking crowns for the next exciting part of the wedding:

4)Musical Chairs
During one of the singing portions of the ceremony, the 3 priests joined hands with bride and groom and circled the table which they had been standing around. They then sang and sort of danced around the table like a ring-around-the-rosie sort of thing. I questioningly whispered to Laura if when the music stopped if the last one of them to find a seat would be out. She wasn't as amused by the comment as I was. :)

5)Putting Feminists in their Places
One of Laura's male cousins got up to give a speech at one point that was basically intended to pay homage to the couple's love for one another, but I was somewhat amused by the wording in parts of it. It went something like this, "Woman must serve her man as she serves god, because..." (I forget why, sadly) And, "Man must serve his woman as he serves himself, because man is good looking." (OK, so this is slight paraphrasing, but I believe that was the gist of it. I was thinking at the time how I really wish I had gotten the speech on tape to show people.) Laura has informed me that Arabic men as a whole tend to be pompous assholes that treat their woman as a possession and definitely not an equal. I suppose that's why her cousin making the speech is single.


An interesting side note is that the groom had been married previously and if one gets divorced, they are never allowed to remarry in the church. Apparently he had to pay $400 (money always talks) to send a letter to the pope himself to have the marriage nullified so he could get married again in the church. Divorced, annulled... It's all semantics and another reason religion is all a bunch of bullshit (you can bribe your way into the pope's blessing. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it...). Anyway, I leaned over to Laura and asked if her wedding was just like this one, which if you can't tell, was far too over the top for my atheist tastes. She said it was, to which I later replied I was very happy that she was divorced and couldn't marry again in this tradition. I was quite happy that it would not be an issue. We will marry outside under the great blue sky with a simple ceremony celebrating our love between each other, not in a threesome with god.

He's invited to come and quietly sit in the back if he wants, but he's not in the ceremony.