Warning: BIG ENTRY
I thought I'd take the opportunity to write about what's been up with me and so I'll be writing about the 2 weddings that I attended within the last 4 days. Attending a Saudi wedding isn't something you see quite often so yeah I'll go ahead and describe what happened
July 5th
The first wedding one was between my cousin Noof and Mohammed. I had only seen the bridegroom in photos but he looked really young; could have passed for a 15 year old. The actual event was going to be situated at the bride's hometown which is in Hassah, a rural city compared to some place like Dammam (one of the closest cities you can get to from Bahrain). Either way, I was expecting a long journey since it takes at least 2-3 hours to get there but things were made worse because of my father's doctor's appointment at 16:00.
We were to leave by 14:30 so we all got ready. My father and my brother wore their thobe which was interesting to see seeing that my father had some kind of black overcoat (something you'd see wearing on the King) and the last time I had seen my brother wear a thobe was when he was 5.
Usually when I go to Saudi, I usually don't completely cover my face because well, I've got nothing to hide hehe It really all has to do whether or not the woman mind's having strange men looking at their faces I suppose. What my mother suddenly decided to do was to buy a face mask (basically a cloth to cover the face) so that we can hide our faces if we put too much makeup on lol My sister had a blast trying it on and looking like a fool. We're thinking of putting up a few videos of her going crazy in her abaya with her face completely covered over. We'll be calling in the "The Crazy Arab Lady" series hahaha (she's actually insisting that we go to places with the whole outfit to do stupid things hehe)
Hours later we managed arrive at the bride's house (this was around 20:00). Absolutely no one was there except some of the younger kids running around and 1 of my older girl cousins (who's sisters with the bride). At this point, I think I should explain what her family is comprised of. There are 10 children in total. The two eldest are brothers and the rest of the 8 children are girls. Yes, there are just a lot of girls and the one girl cousin that was around when we arrived is the same age as me, but for as long as I can remember she's always avoided being girly and I admire her for that. You don't ever see someone with that kind of thinking in my family really.
Anyway, about an hour later the door suddenly opens and I see an unfamiliar face. Actually, that's not really explaining how I felt when I first saw the face at the door. I was shocked! It was my aunt coming back from the hair salon and she had a lot of makeup on. (I tried looking for a pic to prove my point but there's nothing!) The way the whole thing was put on her face was just something you can never imagine to do. She was wearing a red dress so she had a huge red glittery layer of eyeshadow that covered her eyes and up to her eyebrow. Her hair had huge amounts of curls with red and glitter sprayed all over the place. I thought seeing her was surprising enough but I was met with a stream of cousins and aunts with SHOCKING makeup (this included the really young cousins). All these images are imprinted in my head because it was just too much. Their dresses weren't exactly nice either. A lot of sequinces everywhere with strange colored layers. My mind is filled with all these grotesque combinations and BRIGHT colors. I don't mean to be critical but it's just things you don't see people wearing all the time. My aunt was complaining that they had put too much; well the color of their faces were quite different from the rest of the body hehe
Ok, back to the wedding. We were all loaded onto cars and taken to the hall around 22:00. As it IS a Saudi wedding, the women and men are in separate places and so we were dumped off at the place while my brother and father went off to the other side of the building where the men's section was supposed to be. I went in and saw a lot of women in shocking dresses and makeup yet again but there were a lot more of them this time. My sister's one worry about this whole wedding is being looked at. This is unevitable in my family's case because my mother's Japanese (so we don't look fully Arab) and we were trying to dress nicely at our standards so we looked quite different from the rest of the ladies there. I had to go through a lot of cheek kissing by the time I was getting settled to sit down at a table (which was quite hard because the place was almost fully packed). All that kissing really was getting me to have a lot of foundation on my cheek lol
The hall was set up to look like a fashion show catwalk with big stage attached to the end and there were 3 women on that stage with drums (held in the hand) and singing towards the microphone. The beat was nice and people were going up and dancing constantly. I can see that they're confident people. All the lights are on and sometimes no one's dancing but some women can go up and just dance by themselves with everyone looking at them. (That is one thing I can't do o_O) The large women were the most jolly and confident out of everyone. Their hip movement certainly was hypnotic hahaha There were a lot of little girls up on stage dancing as well and it made me realise that when I was small, I probably would have had no problem doing the same thing. I was brought up in the 'Saudi way' till I left to Japan for good and I've always craved for attention haha I see where I get that from.
Anyway, a lot of people were staring and I've never thought that as an issue. I'm surprised and shocked by them so I can't help but stare at them as well so I really don't mind if they have a good look lol My sister can't stand this because she ends up taking it in a bad way. She keeps telling me that they must be thinking about bad things about her or something but heck I told her that she actually looks nice and she should know that she looks nice so who cares what other people think. I mean I stood out more because I look pale next to her lol I did get annoyed when my mom told me that a bunch of young girls walked by her and called her a Filipino though. I hate it when I can't speak Arabic. If people are treating us in a shitty way, there's no way we can complain or say some kind of comeback.
Closing to 1:00 an announcment was made. I didn't realise what was going on until I saw flur of black everywhere. At this point I was tired to sit amongst my relatives so I was at an upstairs balcony thing looking down at the hall with some people. I swear, I should use a stopwatch to see how fast these people can change into their abayas because it was quite quick. One moment everyone's colorful, the next moment 200 people are err black. The announcment was that the male relatives of the bride were going to come to the women's section. The came along and stood on stage to dance a bit with their mother. I know the two eldest brothers in the family and Jamil (the eldest one) was being really shy as usual so he was standing by the side most of the time. My mother was telling me that the young women amongst the crowd could be telling their mother that they want to marry him. She got that idea because the men are basically stared at by 200 women and seeing that Jamil's single and quite cute looking, they'd be looking at him like a piece of mm meat? (Sounds horrible, wish there was a nicer way to expres this)
At 1:00, the bride finally arrives. The smoke machines set on and she walks on the catwalk towards the stage. Her mother is going around fixing the dress and getting her to walk smoothly (seeing that the catwalk was quite small for her dress). She looked really pretty and I'll avoid talking about her makeup. She got on stage and walked around back and forth. She then stood on this light machine sorta thing that gives off different colors everywhere randomly. Once she stood on it, you can see all the colors in the inside of her dress. She really looked like a doll hehe Once she got down and settled down on her chair (with all the men gone), the women came up to congratulate her. There were a couple of chairs on stage and my aunt insisted that we sit down there. My sister had gone ahead and went upstairs by then. My aunt, who's Filipino, suddenly tugged my hand for one music and took me to where everyone was dancing. She told me that our family name was called out so people from that family should come out and dance. I went ahead and danced even though I've never really danced to that particular type of song before. Wasn't too bad actually hehe After that was over, my aunts started to ask where my sister is. I kept pointing towards her on the balcony and saying "Foag" (oa pronounced the way it is 'oak') lol there's my arabic for you. She wouldn't budge no matter how much we waved at her so I went upstairs to talk to her but she insisted that she'd stay up to stop people from stealing our abaya (like that would happen). She finally did come down with a tug from my mother and she had her first dance hehe
At 2:00 they announced dinner and everyone left to a different room where there were platter after platter of lamb on rice. My aunt kindly showed us a place to sit and all. My mom had brought spoons with her because the people there tend to eat with their hands (not everywhere but it just happened to be in that place). After dinner, most of the guests left and the family members were the ones who were around mostly. We ended up staying till around 4:20 after that. We went out of the hall with the bride's family and my father came to pick us up.
I went ahead and asked how it was like for him. He was like "Oh it's custom that the women eat late and stay at the wedding reception till late" hmm basically the men had dinner 30 min after they first arrived (unlike us because we waited for 4 hours) and they had left by midnight back to the bride's house and sat about talking. *sigh* two different worlds indeed. We then arrived at 6:20 in the morning and then got to sleep (I felt sorry for the dog that was left behind for over 16 hours) | 
