Nope, I'm not divorced. Two weddings, same guy. A bit of background:

My husband's parents immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan about 35 years ago. He and I had a traditional American church wedding in Tennessee in early June (and I swear I'll get pictures of that posted one of these days now that I have them back from the photographer), and to honor both our traditions, we gathered with his family in Colorado over the weekend for the walima, a celebratory feast the groom's parents hold after a Pakistani wedding.

From my sister's e-mailed photo album:

SO Hollie loves Zaiem so much she decided to marry him twice! We celebrated her traditional Pakistani wedding this past weekend in Colorado. Friday night was an all-girl party called a menhdi, where the bride is honored with dancing and henna tattooing. Then Saturday was the valima, or wedding ceremony. It was a great time and we got to wear our saris and plenty of bling!

And here's the link to the pictures. Brace yourselves for an explosion of sparkly color!

So as Jen said, Friday night was the mehndi - sort of like their version of a bachelorette party. Traditionally, the night before the wedding, all the women gather to celebrate with the bride, and there's food and dancing and singing and the bride gets her hands painted with henna paste. And the men are very much Not Invited, though apparently that varies depending on how religious the guests are. In our case, it was a ladies (and young boys) only thing because many of Z's older relatives would have been scandalized if the women were dancing in front of the men.

The whole thing was quite an experience. Twelve zillion people I'd never met, many of whom Z either didn't know or hadn't seen in years, probably half of whom were not native English speakers. And in addition to learning the names, I had to remember which honorific to use. For someone who's older than you but of the same generation, you add "baji" (for a woman) or "bhai" (for a man) to the end of their name - it's sort of like the Japanese "san," as far as I can tell. Older generations tend to be "auntie" and "uncle" (or "mamu" in Urdu) no matter how - or if - they're actually related to you. And all the honorifics apply whether you're addressing the person or speaking of them to someone else who cares about that sort of thing. So I had to sort out Deeba-auntie and Uzma-baji and Asid-bhai and Khalid-mamu and Sabina who's just Sabina because she's younger than me. I also have four nieces and two nephews I hadn't met before Thursday, and I had to get them all sorted out (though that was pretty easy because Z talks about them all the time). (Also, aren't they CUTE?) (Sorry for all the parentheses... this is how my thoughts are running at the moment.)

Auntie and Uncle (as my parents-in-law have asked me to call them) brought all my traditional clothes back from their last trip to Pakistan. In addition to the yellow shalwar kameez I'm wearing in the mehndi pictures and the orange lehenga I wore to the walima, I also had two less formal shalwar kameez in midnight blue and in pink. I dressed that way all weekend, which earned MAJOR points with Auntie, and since there's been some tension regarding her only son marrying an American girl, especially after her oldest daughter married an American guy, I'll take all the points I can get!

Shalwar kameez is insanely comfortable and flattering pretty much no matter what you look like. On the other hand, that gorgeous beaded walima outfit was HEAVY. The dupatta (the drapey thing on my head) was about fifteen pounds, and I'm wondering if the neck pain I woke up with this morning has something to do with that. But whatever, it's not about comfort when you're the bride, it's about looking amazing and showing the doubting family that the American girl can fit in.

There had been some tension about that before this weekend, but while we were there, the only person who said anything was my eight-year-old cousin Mannan. I have to tell that story because I'm so insanely proud of my nephew. Mannan came up to me while we were all hanging out at Auntie and Uncle's house after the walima.

"So you're Zaiem-bhai's wife?"

"Yes I am."

"But you're American."

"Yes I am."

"I thought Pakistani people were only supposed to marry other Pakistani people."

"Well..." I dragged that "well" out for as long as possible, trying to figure out how to basically justify my existence to this eight-year-old boy...

And then my BRILLIANT five-year-old nephew Zan leaps to my defense. "Hey! My papa's American!"

"He IS?"

And I left them to it, because I didn't want to make a big thing, but I thought it was amazingly brave of him to stand up to his big cousin on behalf of an auntie he'd only met two days before. He's totally my hero.

So the weekend was amazing, and all the food was incredible, and I got big points for dressing like the family and getting up to dance at the mehndi and learning a few key phrases in Urdu or possibly Arabic (it's hard to sort them out, actually, because the cultural and religious traditions are so intertwined that sometimes Z says he can't tell whether his family is doing something because they're Pakistani or because they're Muslim).

And I think this is my last wedding for a while. I need a nap.