Family Celebration in CO

This past weekend found me in Colorado for my cousin Gabriel's wedding to the girl he has been dating for 5 years: Nikita. Living in Boston for the past 4 years has made seeing family difficult, and so this was also a chance to seek cousins I had not seen since my own wedding or for 15-20 years ago. There was a lot of catching up to do but the amazing thing was how well everyone simply got along as if we did reunions all the time. Much of the credit should be giving to my Auntie Francesca, who booked us four neighboring condos in Estes Park, which all had an open door policy allowing you to wander into the other three at will and chat with whatever relatives were there. With grandparents and seven cousins there with families there was a lot of bonding over a communal bbq and a day playing disc golf out in the park. However, of one thing defined the weekend besides reuniting with family, it was discovering how Indians do weddings. The answer is with a whole lot of dancing and ceremonies. Soliz and I arrived Friday afternoon and were picked up by my mom and aunt at Denver airport just in time to shower and change for the " rehearsal dinner" that was taking place that night. They didn't actually rehearse anything, which became evident on the day of, but more to that later.

The bride's family is the only local one, and their relatives came from Chicago, London, and India, some having been in town a month or more already! I was already a little overwhelmed to suddenly see so many of my family that I hadn't met in some cases for 20 years that to then suddenly greet dozens of Patels was a little overwhelming, not to mention the bride herself, who is the polar opposite of my quiet cousin Gabe. Nikita is a force of nature in her talking, which was referenced several times over the weekend. Their website says that they are perfect because Gabe likes to listen and she likes to talk, and this is truer than anything I have read recently. However she is one of the nicest people I have met and made everyone feel welcome and energized. After a "mexican" dinner that the bride's family had provided for us, the dancing began, and boy was there a lot of it. The purpose behind some of the dances is for every single person at a wedding to interact at least once with every other, and so some dances that involve trading partners would go on for 20 minutes or more as you slowly met everyone in the room while dancing. It was a lot of fun however and a great way to start the trip. Afterwards we all retreated up the mountain to Estes Park for the night.

Saturday was spent as a family with the groom while the bride was subjected to at least two ceremonies and other Indian wedding traditions. The girls headed into town or stayed at the condos while most of the guys went and played disc golf at the YMCA. While the idea of disc golfing with family sounds fun, I found that true joy comes from actually being halfway decent at it, which I am not. The course is littered with trees and I found myself hunting for my disc at every hole, of which we played the full 18. Hot and sunburnt at the end, I was glad to head back and find fresh salsa, beer, and fruit waiting for us outside on the back decks. The afternoon was spent relaxing while playing cornhole or hot-tubbing until the afternoon thunderstorms rolled in and we retreated inside for our family barbeque. The cousins finished off the evening with a movie before turning in to prepare for the big day.

Since this was to be an outdoor wedding in the early morning, the attire was more casual, and luckily I was able to escape the slacks and button-downs I had brought for sandals and Indian garb, consisting of pants and a knee-length tunic with a scarf. My cousin's wedding suit in included lots of costume jewels on his suit as well as a hat, sword and aladdin shoes. These shoes are part of a humorous tradition where the girls steal the groom's shoes and he, who has done the ceremony barefoot, must ransom them back to leave for the reception. Luke and I had all sorts of plans to prevent this but Gabe took off his shoes before we noticed and the girls snatched them like a they were at a Jimmy Choo firesale.

The groom's approach to the ceremony is heralded by his accompanying party who marches behind as he leads with the sword. I think a horse was supposed to be involved but luckily no animals were used. Luke and I carried a scarf over Gabriel's head during the approach and I found out that as one of the bearers I also got to sit up front next to the groom during the ceremony and take turns fanning him with Luke, his brother and chief fanner. So all of the sudden I got a front row seat to the ceremony and as such I am probably in 80% of all pictures taken that day. Hope I didn't squint too much, since those of us sitting up front were not allowed to wear our sunglasses!

The approach ended with the family meeting us and placing saffron and rice on our foreheads (mine included) and Gabriel performing unspeakable things to a coconut with his foot. Truth be told, for a vegetarian culture, these people have a thing against coconuts. They were stomped on and run over by cars. Other food was singled out for abuse as well, but there's a special circle in Hindu hell for coconuts. The ceremony was conducting entirely in Hindi, so I did not really know what was going on, but #2 fanboy was a great position to observe from and I learned a lot.

Moving inside afterwards we had appetizers and a buffet lunch. As they dismissed 1 or 2 tables at a time there was plenty of time to wander outside and watch the storm or the hummigbirds that were all around the lodge. Finally speeches wrapped up the lunch before we moved upstairs for dancing.

Due to the early departures the next day, Soliz and I headed back with our cousin and grandparents down the mountain to Niwot for the night, where we had a pizza dinner and watched movies until bedtime. During that time we discovered that the bride and groom had gone home to Aurora and then straight to Chipotle.

Upon returning home Whit and I headed straight to the pool because Boston is experiencing yet another heat wave in the 90s and it is oppressive here! A softball game with the church and then bed. We've already got the next several weekends booked so the summer looks like it'll fly by! Can't wait for thr visitors to start showing up!

 

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