An eventful weekend in Portland

We drove into Portland from Long Beach Thursday afternoon. That evening was Shilpa's mahendi party, so I headed over the Sushmita's (where the party was being held). If you're not familiar with the tradition, mahendi is the henna "tattooing" you sometimes see on Indian women's hands or feet. The henna is applied as a blackish brown paste, looking something like really, really dark chocolate. It's piped onto the skin just like decorating a cake, in whorls, flowers, vines, paisleys, and other neat designs. It takes a while for the henna to actually stain the skin, so you leave it on for an hour or so, and then, once it's dried, you scrape it off. The henna stain is dark brown or reddish, depending on your skin tone and how well the henna set (I don't have a good picture of the finished henna, 'cause I'm a dork, but Korin has some pictures here). Sushmita and Lavina did a great job with everything. The food was incredible, and the henna was gorgeous. Shilpa's took pretty much all evening to do, because it was so intricate (she had both hands, palms, and feet done). But everyone had a great time, and eventually even the guys present (Sumit, Mandar, and Dan) got into the henna fun!

Friday was a "do everything else that needed to be done" day. Brent and I spent a good chunk of the day at Shilpa and Ben's house, finishing the favors, programs, and all the rest. We accidentally ate Mandar and Lena's (Shilpa's parents) dinner, before it was even finished, and they made fun of us. Oops! We thought it was pretty tasty! In the evening we met up with Erik and Laura, a couple we met on the PCT last summer. If you don't remember them, check out the very first postholer on-trail journal entry. We actually started on the same day as them, practically at the same moment! We met at the Rimsky Korsacoffe House (an outdated, but still accurate blog here), which was an awesome place. Great desserts, really good chai, and creepy bathrooms. The four of us chatted for hours, and had a really good time. Making for another late night.

Valentine's day was the big day, so I set off early for a day of Shilpa-herding. Korin, Brian, Sam, and Charli had driven up from SF the previous evening (read about their disastrous road trip here) and collapsed in their room before I could even see them. But they left Charli with Mom and Dad (who were also up for the wedding) so I was able to play with her a little before I left.

Shilpa-herding is actually not so bad. It is substantially better than herding cats or toddlers, but maybe that's because there were 2 of us (bridesmaids, Sandy and I) and one of Shilpa. We ran some errands for her in the morning, then shuttled her from hair, to make-up, to venue. We bought her lunch in the interim, and made sure she got some fried potato products. Once we got to the wedding venue, we tried to keep her from completely freaking out, and were mostly successful. It seemed like all the guests were there early, and the room that we were changing in was in a really high traffic area, and the door kept opening and closing and opening and closing. We ended up posting Dan (the bridesdude) at the door as a bouncer so we could finally change in peace. When it was time for the ceremony to start, we all realized that we had no idea what the heck we were supposed to do, or how we were supposed to go into the room or anything. I guess that this is sort of what Indian weddings are like though. We just ended up walking in before Shilpa, sitting in some chairs that looked like they might be reserved for us, and then throwing flower petals at Shilpa and Ben when Mandar made "the signal" at us.

It was a wonderful wedding, though. The swami was silly, and everyone was radiantly happy. The idea was to have an Indian ceremony with American highlights, and an American reception with Indian highlights. So the ceremony had all sorts of neat stuff that I'd never seen at a wedding before. There was fire, and Shilpa stuck her toes in some rice, and then she got some red powder in dabbed in the part of her hair. It was really neat. Afterwards things got a little more familiar: tons of great food and booze, toasts, cake, garter and bouquet tosses, and dancing. It was really everything a wedding should be. The celebration of a union between 2 people who love each other, shared by people who love and admire them and wish them the very best. I'm so glad that I got to be a part of it. And I got to dance to that song at the end of Slumdog Millionaire, which is an awesome song, and I wish I owned it.

I don't have a lot of pictures of the wedding itself, as I was a little busy with other things, but I have a few that I pirated from Mom, so here they are.


Sunday morning we all met Tanya, Scott and Maddy Vicory for breakfast at the Original pancake house. Tanya is my cousin, and her daughter Maddy is just about Charli's age. Though really it was just a ploy to get as many people as possible to the Original Pancake house, because that place is the bomb! We had a big party, so it took about an age to get a table, but everyone agreed that it was all worth it. An apple pancake for the table, and a few omelets the size of people's heads were all it took!


Brent and I had to get to the airport almost immediately after getting back from breakfast, so we didn't get to do much more. We're currently in Fort Collins with Mom and Dad for about a week until we head out to Arizona for our 3rd WWOOF. All of our other ones have been so awesome, we're looking forward to it!!

kim