My First Ever Sangeet!

Last night I attended my first ever Sangeet (or Ladies Party, as it is also called). And I must say that you have not partied until you have danced to a mash up of "My Humps" + Hindi music.

OK, maybe I should back up a little. Since this is my first ever Indian wedding, when Shalu gave me my invitation (which, by the way, is the most gorgeous invitation I've ever seen!), I had to have her walk me through what the heck everything was, since my invitation had FOUR invitations in it!¹ The invitation to the Sangeet indicated that there would be Appetizers, followed by Chunni & Tilak, then dinner & dancing. Appies, dinner & dancing I am familiar with, but chunni & tilak, not so much. Around about the time that we were waiting for our ride to pick us up, Shalu's friend, Mina (who I met at the wedding shower last weekend and arranged to carpool with) and I decided to Wikipedia² those terms to see what we could expect. Chunni, as near as we could tell from Wikipedia, is a piece of red fabric the groom's family puts on the bride's head. Tilak is a mark on the forehead.

Here's a pic of the happy couple after the Chunni & Tilak part of the night. As you can see, Shalu bears both the chunni and the tilak. Wikipedia did not steer us wrong!

Don't they look amazing??

OK, a few highlights of the night:

• the food. omg, so delish! I *love* Indian food. Plus, it was all vegetarian!
  
• everyone's outfits - they were soooo beautiful! Shalu looked radiant in her beautiful green dress and Deepak was dashing in his blue outfit.
  
  
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• the music! As I mentioned at the start of the post, it was Hindi music mixed with pop. Billie Jean, plus Hindi. Sexy Back, plus Hindi. It went surprisingly well together and had a great beat, which made for great fun dancing.
• And speaking of dancing, I got a few compliments on my dancing abilities. Now, I've never danced to Indian music before, so I just sort of looked at what other people were doing and tried to imitate it... just feel the beat and go with it! I think people were surprised to see the only white girl there dancing to the Indian
  
• And speaking of dancing, the DJ told us that "this next song will be the last song of the night" about 6 times. At once point, they had turned the lights up for the "last song", but we kept on dancing, so they turned the lights back down and kept playing music! After the actual last song, we decided we still needed to dance some more, so a bunch of us headed to Ginger Sixty-Two. Deepak told us it was Indian Night there, which we didn't believe, as Deepak likes to make things up just to see if you will believe them. But he turned out to be telling the truth, because when we got there, they were, in fact, playing Indian music! Of course, Shalu & her "entourage" (as the DJ there called it) were the only ones wearing Indian outfits, which everyone there thought was very cool.
  
  
  
  
  Here are Shalu & Deepak outside of Ginger Sixty-Two. Party like a rock star.
  

• We stayed 'til Ginger Sixty-Two closed (for those of you who are counting, that's right, we stayed right to the end of *two* parties last night... ya, we are that hardcore!) By then, I was pretty much unable to walk due to my feet deforming shoes. In my defence, the shoes are very pretty. Some peeps headed off for pizza, but me, Andrea & Mina decided that it was time, since it was after 2 am and Andrea had to work in a few hours, to head home.
  

OK, that's enough with the writing. But I'll give you a few more pictures, what with them being worth a thousand words and all.

Me, Radha (sister of the groom) and Mina (friend of Shalu's (and now my friend too!))

Mina, me & Ritu in the back row. Deepak & Shalu in the middle. Meenu up front.

At Ginger Sixty-Two.

Stay tuned for more exciting wedding events next week. Next up, the wedding tradition of Mehndi on Wednesday!

¹See here for a brief description of the different events.

²I also discovered through Wikipedia that Shalu's name is also the name of a "special type of sari."