Viernes el 4 de Abril de 2008
Up early, as I don't tend to sleep as much as I should when I need to. Meet up with Seth, Mar,
Ginny and Fred for breakfast, where I have some amazing food. The food here is great, and
breakfast is an event here. Next up, we head back down to the "internet room" where we also put
together the party favors for the wedding. We get that done fairly quickly, and Mar's brother
takes us into town to see the Gardens of Cuernavaca.
The place is amazing. First off, you could not even tell the entrance is to an amazing
garden/aqueduct that runs through a good part of Cuernavaca. We walk through it quite a bit and get some amazing views, right in the heart of the city. We grab some shaved ice and make our way back to the hotel. A note here, on this little adventure we fit 6 people in a tiny honda
sized car, it was like a college prank.
Back at the hotel, we start to get into "it's time for Seth to get married today at 4PM mode"
but first, we have a light lunch and just hang out and talk for bit. Mar is off getting her
hair done at this time.
We arrange the name cards in alphabetical order then it's off to get ready. I get showered and
dressed into my tux in all of 20 minutes due to time constraints.
(I bought a tux a few weeks ago, and picked up a vest for the tux earlier in the week. I hate
cummerbunds, they are evil.)
At 3:30 I help Seth wrap up a few last minute things and then the wedding begins.
Weddings in Mexico are far far different than U.S. weddings.
There isn't a true best man role here, but I fill the role of close friend of the groom, or
something similar. The wedding takes place entirely at the hotel here, so an open tent was set
up in the garden here where the ceremony takes place. Seth marches in with his mother-in-law, I march in with Marlene, which is cool, followed by the rest of Mar's family.
The ceremony is a Catholic mass, which sorta follows a traditional catholic mass, but with some
changes. Obviously, it's all in Spanish, and I'm able to pick up parts of it. My part in the
ceremony is to just hold the vows, which I hand off during the ceremony. During the ceremony,
the priest tells Mar to translate the important parts to Seth during the ceremony, this is good
as Seth doesn't understand enough Spanish and really, it helps.
The ceremony ends, and about 10 minutes later, there is a civil ceremony. In Mexico, you need
to do both. This part is really unique, a justice of the peace has Seth and Mar and 4 witnesses
(I'm one of them) stand up on what was an altar a few minutes before while the justice gives the
sermon. For a justice of the peace, she gives a fairly in depth one. And everyone signs off on
the certificates, in triplicate. In fact, Seth and Mar have to give their fingerprints too. At
least they didn't have to pop a vein and give blood too, that would be weird.
After the civil ceremony, Mar gets her train fixed while Seth and I wait. It's a very informal
march into the other yard where the reception is being held. Of course, Seth does march in to
the Star Wars processional (the song that is played at the end of the first film when Han and
Luke get the awards).
Then, we start right on the first course. Whereas in the US, there's all that intro stuff, here
you just go right into the food. Cool. Ginny, Fred, Marlene and I are all sitting at the table
with Seth and Mar, which is good, put all the gringos in one spot. The wedding has about 80
attendees and there is a stage set up with a band. Soup is followed by the main course. After,
I do the second best man speech in two weeks. This one, like last week is also done in two
languages, which means I have to read them off a paper, which is weird for me, as I don't
usually do that. People laugh where they're supposed to in both languages, so I'm happy.
After, dancing ensues, and there is a surreal mix of music played. Mostly in Spanish, but also
including the disco spanish versions of YMCA, Macho man and other 70's classics. Very very
surreal. But, very very cool. The version of the bouquet of flowers involves all the women
streaming around the crowd and around and under a bridge made by Seth holding Mar's wedding dress train. The guys do the same thing, but I'm instructed to knock into Seth, as we go along.
The guys are really good at knocking into Seth and manage to knock him down. That was oddly
fun. The band plays until 11PM and is immediately followed by a Mariachi band, which is really really really cool. The play for an hour. This part was hilarious, as the Mariachi band plays by
request. So when they asked for a song the entire crowd kept asking for songs to play. Since
it was Mar and Seth's wedding, Mar's requests of course, won.
What was very nice and very cool for Seth and Mar to do was they had a song dedicated to Marlene and I as our 5 year anniversary is on April 5th. So that was very cool to have a Mariachi band play a song especially for us. A great way to end the night.
The party ends in the neighborhood of 12:30 AM, so the wedding was an 8 and a half hour party.
Really cool.
Asleep by 1AM and on to Saturday...
