The Wedding

The major event around here that we were all waiting for is finally over. THE wedding. After weeks and weeks of stressing over the dresses that were being made at the dressmakers, the parties, the food, the Marhaba, Salam Alakhom... We survived.
Friday Khalood and Alaa were heading to Caesarea to have their pictures done. They get totally done up in their wedding atire, hair make up the full 9 yards. We followed them around the beachfront snaping our own pictures. I got some incredible shots of the sunset, a statue that was quite well endowed and a few overgrown well fed cats (honestly, they all weigh between 20-30lbs and are about 2x the size of a normal house cat).
Saturday was a flurry of things to do. The girls all had appointments at the hairstylist at 1pm. This is a HUGE business here. There were 3 wedding parties going on while we were there. They had one girl blow drying the hair straight, one doing make up and then they would take turns putting the hair up. Lena was first up. We were both so excited! Even though I am an ex hairstylist, Lena has never had her hair "done" before. They were a little baffled by her hair texture, as it's more American than Arab. One girl blew dry her hair straight, then she went to another chair and got makeup, and hair done in record time. She was beaming!
The wedding began at 6pm. There was a major shortage of cars to get us all to the wedding. It was only down the road and around the corner, but the way they drive here, I can't let my guard down for a minute. In one car alone, they had in the front seat, the driver, two adults, holding a one year old, and 5 people in the back. Jay got extreemly upset at everyone who kept insisting that we don't need to buckle Lena in, just have her sit on our lap. So everyone went to the wedding and Abid returned after dropping off his mom and sister and gave us a lift.
The wedding was incredible. The building from the outside didn't look like much, but the inside was fabulous.
There was lots of good food, dancing, crying, laughing and picture taking. I alone took over 250 pictures at the wedding. The wedding ended at 11:30pm, but the partying continued here at the house until about 2am. I was in bed asleep by 1am.