We were married in Sri Lanka at a private villa on a pineapple plantation, part way through a 13-month backpacking trip around the world. It was a buddhist ceremony completely in Sinhalese - really lovely with alot of symbolism (a good thing as, otherwise, it might have been difficult to understand what was going on). Here is a bit of a collage as to what the day was like (click on the image to see a larger version).
We bought the maid-of-honour's sari in Varanasi India. I wanted to wear it as my wedding dress but it wasn't going to work - a bit sad since Varanasi has arguably the most beautiful saris in the world and I really wanted to get mine there too. Since white is for funerals in India, the selection of white saris was somewhat more sombre than what I was looking for. The wedding colour in India (at least in the North) is red! Fantastic! This got me all excited that I could wear a nice bright colour for my wedding. Alas, the reverse is true in Sri Lanka where white is for weddings and red is for funerals. Although I'm all for doing things in a non-traditional way, I thought it might be distasteful to get married in red, so I had to get my sari once we arrived in Colombo. It was a bit of a mad dash to find it and I was ushered around to numerous sari shops by our (rare in Sri Lanka) drag queen wedding dresser/makeup artist/hair stylist. I also had to settle for a white bouquet of flowers as the options were surprisingly limited and we weren't interested in getting stressed out over the event.
I adored the head jewel and gold and garnet accessories and the bright colours for the rest of the wedding party. I also loved being barefoot. We opted out of the traditional men's wedding attire, which looks like tan coloured pijamas, but needed something other than traditional tuxedos or suits which, aside from being way too warm, would have looked out of place. Their outfits weren't so shiny in real life - the silk really reflected the camera flash! For fun, Rich and the best man also decided to grow mutton chops for the event. Hilarious!
Even with only two other guests (our maid of honour and best man) it was totally over the top with a poruwa (a platform made entirely out of woven palm leaves), dancers, chanters, drummers, an elephant and a five course meal that included a huge lobster each. The weather was super hot and we all started to look a bit like glazed donuts by the end of the day so wedding attire was quickly shed and we all jumped into the pool, played some tunes on our iPod over the speaker system and drank champagne all night.
The best wedding I've ever been to - glad it was mine!
