A Chilean Wedding...

I'm writing this at noon the day after the wedding and I might be one of the few guests awake at this early hour...

The church ceremony for Paula's nephew Antonio and his bride Consuelo was last night at 8:00pm (they were married in a civil ceremony about 6 months ago and this is the church/family event). It all started off with everyone (including the groom and all of the various faimly members) milling around outside the church and most of them smoking cigarettes for about a half hour prior to the arrival of the bride. This smoking of cigarettes will be a signature feature of the evening...

A few minutes after 8:00 Consuelo arrived with her father and the ceremony began almost immediately. The ceremony was a traditional Catholic service (including Mass) and in contrast to American weddings there were no bride's maids or men or best man or any of those additional participants - just the happy bride and groom plus a couple sisters who spoke a few words and some cute ring bearers.

After an hour of standing up and sitting down, they were pronounced Man and Wife (or at least I think that must have happened, it was all in Spanish and other than an occasional "Dios" or "Padre", I pretty much understood nothing...

After everyone stepped outside for a cigarette and congratulations to the happy couple and their familes, we retired en masse via separate and circutious routes to a wedding hall across town for the main event - the reception.

Wow!

We arrived after being lost for a while, but always heading in the right general direction. After consulting taxi drivers, gas station attendants, and a couple cellphone calls to family members we ended up at the reception. Actually it was a wall of smoke with a reception somewhere inside. Of the 160 guests, I would guess that 140 of them were smoking. But enough of the smoke, what about the food?

Delicious! Waiters and waitresses moved through the crowd with trays of pisco sours, mango sours (yummm!) and fruit juices. Then others came through the crowd with trays of appetizers - shrimp on sticks, crab dip, quail eggs wrapped with bacon (originally I thought Paula said that I had missed the "whale eggs" and I had to explain to her that whales are mammals and have their young live rather than in egg form... eventually I figured things out...), little crackers piled up with tasty salmon and avocado, and several others. All of them delicious.

After an hour or so we headed for the dining room. It was 11:00pm and we were sitting down to a 4 course dinner. Delicious! Towards the dessert course we were shown a video of photos from the bride and groom's lives with pictures from their baby days until quite recently.

Around midnight the dancing started.

First the Bride and Groom danced to My Way by Frank Sinatra (a video of Frankie singing at Vegas was shown in the stage screen) and then family members joined the dancing and finally everyone. The first hour was Latin hits. The dance floor was packed with crazed dancing (many dancers holding a drink and cigarette at the same time!). Also included during the night were American rock and roll (that pretty much emptied the dance floor except for an older crowd), a waltz, and even the traditional Chilean folkdance - La Cueca.

Dancing was suspended for the tossing of the bridal bouquet, the groom's glove, and cutting of the cake.

At around 2:30am Paula and I decided, during one of our oxygen breaks outside, that we were ready to head home. We made a round of kisses and handshakes to our tablemates and other family members. A taxi was called and off we went. We were one of the first to leave and rumor has it that the party continued until 5:30 or 6:00am...