This weekend our friends Heather and Vijay got married in a moving, beautiful ceremony, outside on the lawn at a gorgeous house on a perfect fall day. Afterwards there was a live band and a lot of dancing and champagne. All the good wedding stuff. Since Vijay is Indian the event was a melding of two traditions - a traditional Christian ceremony in which the bride and groom said their vows and shared a first married kiss, as well as a Hindu ceremony, which I loved, and wondered, during the whole thing, why I can't find a job as a writer where people would just send me to things, like Hindu wedding ceremonies, and have me write about that. Would I eat the cake and drink the wine afterwards? Sure. But the next day I'd get professional and write a kickass story. Anyway.

A few days before the wedding a bunch of women got together for a Mhendi party - that's where the ladies hang out and have a fabulous time, dance and have their hands painted with henna. Two incredibly talented women painted all our hands while we "ooohhed" and "aaahhed" and talked about how totally great this was and why couldn't we do it all the time? The henna, in a thick, wet, paste form when applied, eventually dries and falls off leaving a semi-permanent design behind, but until that happens - it takes an hour or so - you've got to keep your hand really still. Which made driving stick shift home that night kind of hard and probably really dangerous:

I went to the Verizon store in the mall today to ask about some problems I've been having with my phone and had to stand in an incredibly long line, because apparently people besides me are constantly breaking their stuff. We were packed pretty tight in there and an Indian man and his son were standing right in front of me, and they seemed really nice and all, but I'm pretty sure I caught them checking out my henna and my bet is that they were wondering, "Who the hell does that white girl think she is?"

You can see more pictures of all the fun and me trying to be really exotic here.