(continued) This will be the third international Muslim Desi wedding I’ve attended (the first was in Kashmir in 2011, the second in Lahore and Karachi in 2014), so I’m amused to consider myself an “expert” now.
We continue with Day 2 of a desi wedding: The Baraat or The Shaadi.
After returning from Lahore in the evening, we changed quickly and headed over to our friend Ali’s (the groom) house again. This time we’re seeing him off personally to the Barat.
We then followed his convoy back to the Marriott Islamabad. The Barat commences when Ali is first introduced with his family . . .
. . . and minutes later his bride, Kulsoom, arrives with her family to be ceremoniously betrothed to Ali. The bride’s family hosts the groom’s for the Barat so that the bride can be formally taken to his home “for the first time.”
While the Mehndi is brashly colorful and celebratory, the Barat instead is the more regal affair:
We have some traditional cake-cutting:
After a few games where Ali has to playfully barter to get his shoes back from Kulsoom’s sisters who try to get him to stay, Kulsoom has to cry her eyes out at the end.
Like, it’s mandatory. Look at Ali’s grin in the background: “she’s been practicing all week for this!”
For guests, we spend the entire evening shmoozing, passively watching the ongoing celebrations at our leisure, eating to our wits end, and taking group photos together:
We happen to have enough monsooners tonight for a Prague/Budapest Monsoon Reunion Photo!
- At time of posting in Islamabad, Pakistan, it was 20 °C - Humidity: 50% | Wind Speed: 8km/hr | Cloud Cover: mostly cloudy