Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Wedding

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of flying out with the wife and kids to attend my sister's wedding.  It was really well planned and well attended.  We flew in on Wednesday night and the events unfolded through the weekend.

Mendhi was done in the city at the Darbar Grill off of Lexington.  Of course it was mostly women, but as the driver for the ladies, I did attend.  There were around 40 people in attendance.  The ladies doing the mendhi were good, but it was a slow process.  The food was pretty good.

Simi's puja was Friday morning in my parent's suite at the Doubletree in Sommerset, NJ.  The priest was really good and the whole event was less than 20 people.  The food afterwards was really good, but we did order too much and tried to stash it in everybody's mini refrigerators.

The Sangheet was Friday night at the Mirabelle ballroom at the Doubletree.  My girls enjoyed decorating the venue in the afternoon.  The evening included some speeches and my daughters welcome dance.  Food was Middle Eastern and catered by Sahara.  This event was attended by about 150 folks.

The wedding itself was Saturday night and held at The Palace in Sommerset, NJ.  This was an amazing venue with a tremendous staff.  We did pictures in the afternoon, then the ceremony on an outdoor mandap, then appetizers inside, followed by speeches, dinner and reception inside.  There were about 250 people in attendance.

There was enough to do in the area to keep ourselves entertained.  There was an indoor pool.  The fitness center was reasonably appointed with cardio machines and dumbbells up to 50#.  They also had a basketball court and tennis court with racquets and balls at the front desk.

While playing outside, my daughter gave me her gold earrings for safekeeping while we played.  After the game, the girls headed over early to get their hair done.  It was at this point that my wife reminded me to bring her earrings which I realized had leaped out of my pocket and hopefully were still on the court.  Scrambling downstairs, I recruited everybody in the lobby to help me search the courts.  Earring 1 was found in about 5 minutes, but was thoroughly smashed.  Earring 2 was found by the same guy in less than 20 minutes and was thankfully intact.  At that point, I claimed success and headed to the front desk to hopefully find some pliers and repair earring 1.  The maintenance guy came up with his tools and fortunately had some needle nose pliers that got close enough.  The biggest stressor during this whole ordeal was the realization that the earrings were a gift from their maternal grandmother who passed away last year.  I could not have been in any more trouble than not recovering the earrings.

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