Thursday – Relative Rest Day.
Wedding preparations are full on.
Today, the bride and groom need to get the marriage contract papers. This is important as marriage is a contract under Islam and is not official until signed.
The bride has to explicitly agree to the wedding and the marriages papers are needed to have the ceremony performed tomorrow.
Friday, the official ceremony will be held at Naila’s house, with 90 or so guests in a tiny courtyard, and the official reception on Saturday with 400 guests!
For the men, pretty quiet day, After lunch, we all did our own thing. Sean and Ayesha getting the paper work for the marriage contract done, Clive went golfing and I processed images from the last few days, as well as posting on the blog and updating previous entries. I’ve shot a few hundred images with the Fuji, the XT2 and the X500 flash and am pretty pleased. I’ve backed up about 45GB of images so lots to do when back home.
All the Ladies are going to get their mendi or henna done on their hands as part as the final pre-wedding party. They left about 2 to go to Naila’s house. There are specialists who come to the house to do the decorating and give instructions.
There was a late (10pm) dinner for men.
Naila’s brother, who lives, funnily enough, about 5 km from us in our home town near Toronto, picked us up and took us to the Boat Club. Food was good again, and we had local food, roti (naan), a Dal, Chicken Masala and a mutton dish.
There is another Canadian wedding going on, with a bigger crowd of 20 Canadians attending. As we were leaving for dinner, they came back to the compound in a brilliant party bus, decorated like the ones on the street. We found out later that they had arranged a tour and had visited a number of sites around the town, and apparently the tour was very well received.
Salman gave us a run down on tomorrow activities, the Nikka, and Clive and I were asked to sign the marriage contract at the wedding on Sean’s behalf. It would be an honour to do so and I agreed.
After a long but relatively peaceful day, off to bed!
Campbell Family Travels 