Robyn's Wanderings

You can have your wedding cake and eat it too… or wear it!

I couldn’t think of a more appropriate topic for today’s blog post: destination weddings. Why? Well that’s because one of my longest-serving and best friends will be getting married this Friday!

Our wanderer Nicola must have read my mind as she travels through the different destinations and their wedding traditions this week. What do they do in India? Who wears kilts? Tell us Nicola!

Weekends in the summer are wedding primetime.

In July, I attended a wedding where one of the girls at my table said she has been to 8 weddings this summer. And yesterday?  Well my hairdresser said she was attending a wedding this weekend.

Of course, people flock to Bermuda in the summer for weddings – overseas family, destination weddings or honeymoons. As summer in Canada is  “limited edition” (short & sweet), you have to act fast or else more than just the cake will be frosted… unless you want your special day to be extra “white”!

If you get hitched in Scotland, you may need white Wellington boots and umbrellas on your wedding day.

In the southern hemisphere, December/January is wedding season – summertime and Christmas holidays. My South African cousins were both married in December, but sadly the dates fell around my undergraduate exams… twice!

In fact, as a testament to how spread-out my family is, my other cousins live in Australia and 2 out of 3 are now married. While they held their weddings in April/May (autumn time), my exams and commitments STILL kept me from celebrating with them. At this rate, I shall miss my own wedding…

My cousin’s wedding in Sydney, Australia, with the cake baker none other than his younger sister!

And in India? On the first night of our 4-week stay with an Indian host family, my roommate and I were bombarded with our host parents’ wedding albums… all four! Their photos were spectacular, capturing the colours, the traditions and joyful celebrations that were a part of their wedding ceremony – although our lack of Hindi/English communication left an air of mystery as well.

We later learned that the married women in our village wore a red powder along their hair parting. This is Sindoor, a mixture of dried turmeric and lime, which indicates that they are married. Widows will no longer wear the Sindoor, but they may still wear bindis. A bindi, the traditional dot on a woman’s forehead, is worn by married women in India, but may also be worn by unmarried girls and children. The specific meaning of why someone sports a bindi depends on the occasion, the colour and the shape.

One of the women in our village in Northern India, wearing the Sindoor and bindi.

The two weddings I have attended in my university town were for friends that I met while studying, but in both instances we met on exchange in France – one during a semester in Paris, and the other over a year abroad in the French Alps. French is the language of love, after all, and the romantic charm of both the City of Lights and the quaint Alpine towns is incontrovertible. [That is, at least, because neither couple has had the chance to visit Greece… yet!]

An appropriate champagne flute for a bride who studied in Paris, and a couple that got engaged during a visit to the Château de Versailles.

Everyone does their wedding in a unique way, and if there is Scottish lineage in your family, you may find yourself surrounding by kilt-clad men. Who take great pride and joy in swishing their pleats and posing for photos. Chances are that if you are brave enough to sport a kilt… you won’t mind basking in the glory!

So to wrap up wedding weekend, here’s a glimpse of the cheeky side of weddings – no pun intended!

Hmm… what a great segue for next weekend’s topic, the kilt [Hint – that is my father on the far left all kilted up… this was neither his first nor last kilt trip!].