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quick update

If you have been following our blog, you'll notice we stopped blogging after the first part of the wedding. The second wedding on Monday night left us very tired, and then we took a little trip to Agadir. The planning to get to Agadir was a bit stressful, so we didn't really have much time for the cyber cafe. Then in Agadir, we spent most of our time at the beach and in the hotel pool. When it was time to leave Morocco, we flew to London. We spent 12 hours in the city, had an excellent time, then returned to the airport where we slept on a bench for the night. We flew home at noon the next day.

We have been back for two days. Rob is busy preparing for the start of the football season, and I have some internships I'll be doing in August. Over the next week or so, we would like to add some more pictures and blog about the second part of the wedding, Agadir, and London. I can't really tell if anyone is actually reading our blog, but it serves as a nice journal for us, so we'll try to finish it while we can still remember the details!

S A T U R D A Y Night!!

So it has been a while but we have been a little busy.

The wedding on Sat night was supposed to start at 1030 but did not actually start until about 200 in the morning. Thats right, it was about three qnd a half hours late. I was stressed to no end. I thought people would get mad and I would be blamed and it was all crashing down around me.

Then the wedding started and it was fine. No one was upset. No one cared. That is when I realiwed two things.
1. If you are late and no one cares, you are not really late.
2. When a wedding goes until dawn it does not really matter when you start.

This was a wedding on a rooftop with the blaring arabic band. This would have easily been shut down right away in the states due to noise but the biggest problem they had were neighors peeking and whistling from across the streets.

The wedding began with a procession that had all the people that were on Rachids side. They played teh drums and chanted while Rita sat on a silver throne on the roof (which she did for two hours alone due to his lateness)

They also brought up all the gifts in ornate gift basket. Fine candies and milk were right next to bras and makeup, each having an equal value. All of these were taken to the decororater the night before and were really gorgeous for the wedding.

Then they all went upstairs were the singing and drumming continued and rachid took his place on the throne next to Rita. Like everywhere, the emphasis here is on the bride and she had her hair up and jewels glued to her pale made up skin and she never smiled, which gave her more of a royal air. He wore a suit and tie and smiled the whole time.

After a while they hoisted Rita up on a liter of sorts and swung her around while the band played. She in turn was emotionless except for her hand motions, which made it look like she was turning two huge control knobs above her head. All the while she was up there, people made gestures as if to throw invisible confetti up around her and she responded in kind.

Then they took the roof off the liter and really got her up there swinging around. The was moving to the music and looking like an old airplane propellar that was having trouble getting started.

Then Rachid got hoisted twice, once standing and then the liter was removed, the band took a break, and they sat up on therir throne.

Thrones are great. They conveniently show your superiority and give you a place to sit and be seen by all. Alas, they are not so great for taking pictures in front of. For one thing, it was silver which the flash always reflected off of weird. It was also right in front of a giant light which shows up in a ton of photos. Worse of all, it also makes anyone standing in front of the throne for a picture look approxiamately the size of King Kong.

We tried taking pictures of me from every angle, but they all made me look like I was Photoshopped in as a cruel joke.

The wedding was essentially this.

The couple entered.
They danced together.
They sat on the throne.
Something happened. ( a reading, a serving of dates, a dollar dance where rachid got things stuck in his hat, a tea party, etc)
The couple left
They came back up to show her new dress
repeat

This happened four times and each time Rita came back in a dress that was more beautiful than the last. I thought that this costume change idea would be a great thing for american wedding planners. It lifts the restriction on just wearing white (Rita had a red, blue, green, and white) and makes one extrordinarily long wedding seem like 4 really short ones.

Of course, Jenny and I sat right by the big light and were dive bombed by bugs, each more terrifying than the last. They flew in my fancy robe and generally did a outstanding job of making us look nervous to criminally insane. It seems that we have arrived at high fly season and no one else really cares but us.

Jenny spent most of the night being told that she needed to dance. She danced to about 90 percent of the music and the people loved it!! the singer seemed to sing whatever came to mind and at one point he was singing about Jenny dancing and saying

Who is moroccan here? She is dancing like one of us.

Needless to say she was pretty proud.

At dawn the wedding ended with the four of us (us rita and rachid)loading into some car to take pictures on the street. Jenny was the assistant, organizing the dress in ways that us guys would never have thought of. They dropped us off and we looked like we were really party animals walking in to a stone cold hotel at 6 in the morning.

We discussed the night and went to bed at 7 sleeping until 6.

After all we had another all night wedding to do on monday night.

For that one I slept next to my car......

Wedding Album

Hello

It's Jenny. Rob is typing a blog about the wedding, and my job is to insert pictures into the blog. Already I have done a poor job. Rob looked at how many pictures I down loaded from the camera onto the computer and gave me a disapproving look when he saw how many I had selected. He told me my job is to insert into the blog only a few pictures that highlight the wedding, so I will try my best.

A few nights before the wedding we went to the tailor to pick up all of Rita's decorated clothes for the wedding. The traditional outfit women wear to weddings is called a taksheeta, but I do not know how to spell this word. All the guests and the bride wear taksheetas. The bride's taksheeta is elaborately decorated. The fun part is that the bride changes her outfit many times through the night. The number of outfits she wears is a surprise to the guests and to the groom.

I borrowed a taksheeta from Rita's family so I could fit in at the wedding. Here I am with Rita's uncle and two little girls before the wedding began in the entryway of Rita's house. The taksheeta has enormous sleaves!Rob bought a jelaba at Jemma el fna square so he could also wear traditional clothing to the wedding. Here is Rob with Rita's uncle.


Here is Rita waiting for her father to take us to Fadli's salon to get our hair and make up done. She is wearing one of the new jelabas Rachid gave her as part of the dowry. With each jelaba he gave her a matching head scarf and matching sandles. The necklace is a gift from me. When asked what to bring as a wedding gift Rachid said "girl things" like make up, clothing, or jewelry. I felt jewelry was the safest thing to bring of the choices.

Here are her hands decorated with henna. All the women attending a wedding decorate both sides of their hands and feet with henna for the celebration.
Here is Rita sitting on her throne at the front of the wedding celebration. She is waiting for Rachid to come with his family bringing gifts for the bride (the dowry). After some time she begins to wonder where Rachid is. He arrived 2 hours late!

The band keeps all the women entertained while we wait for Rachid to show up. The band was amazing, and they kept us all entertained the entire night (from 11pm to 6am!)
Here comes Rachid and his family. Rachid's family is Berber, the people native to Morocco's mountains before the Arabs came. The Berbers still speak their own language because the Arabs inhabited the plains and created the cities of Morocco while the Berbers continued to live separetely in the mountains. The Berbers did adapt Islam from the Arabs. Here Rachid and his family are parading through the streets bringing gifts to Rita. Everyone one the roof with Rita was quiet because we could hear Rachid's family chanting and signing as the approached Rita's house.
The men in the white robes (in the picture above) are not part of the family. They are hired to lift Rita and Rachid (separately) and turn them around as the people at the wedding cheer for them. It is difficult to explain this with words. Here Rita is being lifted above the crowd by the men in the white robes and red hats. She waves at the crowd as they cheer for her.
Now it's Rachid's turn to be lifted and cheered for!

Here is the couple, finally together at the front of the ceremony. They are not supposed to smile. Rachid smiled most of the night though!

Rob and Jenny at the wedding! We made a big mistake by sitting near the lights. Everyone else was sitting far from the lights. We ended up with lots of bug bites :(

Rita is wearing a new taksheeta! There were many changes of clothes throughout the night. She wore four taksheetas and one western wedding dress!

There was lots of dancing all night! The band and the singer really got the crowd of women going (only women dance at Moroccan weddings). By 6am I was very tired!




When the sun rose, the band stopped playing. Rachid and Rita found Rob and I and said, "Let's go". We got into a car, drove away, and stopped to take pictures of Rita and Rachid on Avenue Mohammed VI (the current king).

After the pictures, Rita and Rachid dropped us off at the hotel. I can't imagine what the receptionist thought when he saw us coming in at 6 in the morning. Since we were dressed in clothes for a wedding, he might have known where we were. We discussed the wedding in our room until we collapsed into a deep sleep for the next 12 hours!