Nidhi’s Wedding in DC
This past weekend I attended my first ever Christian-Hindu wedding in Washington D.C. My college housemate Nidhi Kalra married Dave Ferguson, whom she met in grad school at CMU. The wedding was wonderful, and the larger weekend experience very eventful.
It didn’t start out so well. Dori and I had a late-ish flight down to DC on Friday evening, but we left early for the airport so Dori could get in a bit of homework using my laptop. Now, earlier in the week, I had a somewhat random hard crash on my laptop (of the grey-screen, power-button with “please reboot” in 10 languages variety), and subsequently had a strange no-keyboard-input phenomena. I did the magic incantation to reset the power management unit on my PowerBook G4, and things resumed normal operation. I didn’t expect any permanent damage though. So, I turned on my computer to let her get started, but it seemed that the magic smoke had left while I wasn’t looking. I actually called Apple while in the airport, and to my surprise, I had AppleCare on the machine! Hooray! As I write this, I’m waiting for a box to let me ship the lappy back to Apple, so they can replace the smoke.
The downside of this, apart from the obvious busted laptop, was twofold - Dori couldn’t do the work she needed to, and I was without my emergency save-my-business-if-it-falls-over tactic. Needless to say, this caused a bit of stress for us. I went so far as to try and find the closest Apple Store (Bethesda), but ultimately after much back-and-forth, decided to just wait until we got back before shipping it out.
Saturday was the actual wedding day, and it started off around 11:30 when we left our hotel in Georgetown for brunch and a pooja with the wedding party. We rode the DC metro for the first time, and it was a fun experience - the tunnels with their high ceilings are really nice. We managed to meet up with David and Diego on the train (how’s that for timing!), and got our first taste of the georgian architecture that is everywhere in DC. Brunch was at White Tiger, just a few blocks northeast of the Capital Building.
My understanding of a Ganesh Pooja is extremely limited, but I believe the crux is that the couple makes an offering to Ganesh and asks for his blessing for their marriage. It was a nice ceremony, and Nidhi’s mother gave commentary throughout to help the many non-hindu attendees follow. Afterwards was a tasty vegetarian indian brunch, which to my delight, Dori actually enjoyed! She has had a long-standing aversion to Indian food owing to her extreme sensitivity to spice. Perhaps I’ll get to have some more than once a year now. 
After brunch Dori, David, Diego, and I headed on to accomplish my one DC sightseeing mission - Honest Abe! We started White Tiger and did a “running tour” of the mall. The wedding was at 4, and we left brunch at about 1 (admittedly it started late!), and in our running tour we saw the a bunch of Senate / House office buildings (i.e. the place where we deliver petitions), the Capital Building, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the Air & Space museum, like 50 other Smithsonian buildings, the WWII memorial, the reflecting pool (which was quite green - oddly fitting considering how much DC is run by money), the Washington Monument, and finally, the Lincoln Memorial. It was a 1.5-2 mile walk, but the weather was beautiful, and it was really a lot of fun to do.
As David so aptly put, everything in DC is monumental. The georgian architecture, the sheer size of everything, its all very impressive. Monumental. At times I was reminded of Rome, especially when looking at the Supreme Court, and the Library of Congress, with its Trevi-esque fountain out front - admittedly it was much smaller than the real one, but reminiscent all the same.
After our running tour, we hailed cabs to our hotel and got ready for the wedding. Dori and I ended up getting back to the hotel a bit later than planned - at about 3pm (the wedding was at 4). We showered quickly and dressed as fast as possible, but at 3:40 when we were ready to leave, a problem arose with Dori’s dress. I had to run down to the front desk, get their sewing kit, and repair her dress. I don’t think I’ll win any awards for elegant stitching on this one, but my previous intense knot study did come in handy! Finally with the dress repaired we set off for the wedding, but by now it’s roughly 3:50.
It turns out that not only was the ceremony further away than we thought, but what appeared to be a direct route on the map was not. Luckily we were picked up by another lost couple in a cab (they recognized me from the elevator), and we managed to get to the reception missing only the first little bit. I’m so used to Jewish weddings where they start 30 minutes after the time on the invitation - apparently that’s not a cultural universal as this was my 2nd wedding where the ceremony started promptly at the time on the invitation. Who knows - perhaps it even said “promptly”. My computer was out, so I couldn’t check!
The parts of the ceremony that I saw were really very sweet. Nidhi and Dave clearly love each other very much, and their mixed Hindu / Christian ceremony shows a cultural maturity in them and their families. The setting in the garden, with the rainbow of flowers as backdrop, was a perfect match for the affair. Dori & I very much enjoyed seeing it.
At the cocktail hour we got to visit with some of the other members of our crew that we had missed at earlier events - Dan & Katie, Thom, and Gil & Josh. My friends and I so far all retain a very comfortable reunion-esque friendship. By that I mean we don’t all talk during the year or so we might be apart (in fact, its always interesting to learn who talks to who, and how information moves through the network), but there is a very good feeling of comradery and congeniality when we are all physically together. It was great to see everyone, in a nutshell. I also admit to having a significant quantity of champaigne (award winning NZ champaigne!) at the cocktail hour. If anyone can remind me of the identifying marks of the label, I’d be grateful!
I hope to be pardoned for skimming on the details of the reception - I’ll try to be brief as this post has already taken too long to write, so here are the major points:
- Food - excellent!
- Friedland’s MC skills (yo) - excellent! I believe I told him that day, but if he pronounced anyone’s name wrong, it was masked perfectly by the confidence and fluidity of the presentation.
- Speeches - Both touching and very amusing (especially in the case of Dave’s brother)
- Dancing - fun, though I admit to not doing a lot. The indian-pop stuff was great!
- Cake & Dessert - sooo good. This one probably will taste pretty good after a year.
The next day Dori and I decided to return to Boston early, to try and make up for the lost time she needed for her homework. My laptop failure really had repercussions throughout the entire weekend - much more than I had originally expected. In the end, there were no problems that I needed to deal with, the only casualty was Dori’s ability to concentrate on her homework. We managed to get an earlier flight back, and had a real character of a cab driver. What kind of guy mortgages his house so he can have a $100k wedding for his son? That price includes an entrance on a white horse, which as I understand it, puts the $100k wedding at the cheap end of the insane scale. And here I thought my wedding was mid-tier expensive; it was practically city hall by comparison.
Best of luck to the happy couple!
PS - If you made it this far, enjoy the pics!