Monday, September 26, 2005

A Rainy Italian Wedding

I had my Monday night ladies last night.
Keiko had just gotten back from her daughters wedding in Italy so we ended up girl chatting the entire night away.
Her daughter has married a very good-looking man.
At first Keiko had been hesitant about going, but we convinced her.

She is really glad that she went.

Her son-in-laws hometown is a tiny agriculture village in the middle of nowhere, far far far away from any tourist attractions. The village consists of about 10 houses and a church, with an area population of just over 100 people. All came to the wedding.
The father-in-law is the butcher and is therefore the second most important man in the village after the priest.
Keiko’s daughter decided to get married in a beautiful powder blue and pink kimono. Keiko and her other daughter had spent the entire summer learning how to tie it. There is nothing easy about tying a kimono. Keiko didn’t know what she was more nervous about: tying the kimono or meeting her new family.
They did it and it looked great.
The bride showed up at the Catholic Church surrounded by the entire mountain side population and dazzled them all. Most had never even seen a Japanese person before let alone one in a kimono.
The priest of the church was very excited about the wedding. He told Keiko all about his church and how even though it was a catholic church he happily catered to everyone of all religions and non religions when it came to weddings. It was a two-hour long wedding with the priest breaking into a long tangent about how cool Japan was and how badly he wanted to visit it. There was no communion because Keiko’s family is not catholic, but there was the breaking of break.
When the priest broke the bread her son thought the priest had made a big mistake.
-opps
After the wedding and the throwing of rice and pasta (a joke done by their university friends) the couple was off to the nearest Palace to do official wedding photos. The photographer got totally carried away and ended up taking 320 pictures. Even before he was finished snapping he was asking them for permission to use the photos for advertising. They did end up on the front page of the newspaper as the son-in-law is in the government doing something or other.
While the pictures were going on the 5-hour feast had started with over 100 people stuffed happily into the restaurant. There was a five-tier cake and Keiko’s daughter was given the honor of changing into her mother-in-law’s wedding dress.
Keiko was dazzled, wowed, happy and amazed by every part of her trip.
One of the first questions I asked her was:
-How was the weather?
-Great, except for the wedding day, which rained a little bit.
-That is too bad.
(All three ladies)-NOO!!!!

Turns out that Italy and Japan share a proverb that more or less translates to:

Rain on a wedding day means that the marriage will stay together.

It has something to do with soil.
Basically soil is the beginning and ending of all life. If it rains than the soil is sticky and can be worked with. If it rains on your wedding day it means that your marriage will stay together and be sticky like glue, in a sense. If it doesn’t rain, the soil is dry and will crumble, and your marriage might also. This is why the main wedding season in Japan is during the rainy season.

I spent most of the night last night racking my brain trying to remember if it had rained on the third time that Li and I headed to the city office to finally get married. The government paper work involved had given us a bit of a headache.
I am positive it was beautiful and sunny the first two time, but I vaguely remember it drizzling and thinking it was a sign of bad luck on that third and final visit to the office to officially get married.
Maybe not.
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Posted by (Top)Andrea::9/26/2005 :: 0 Comments:

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