The reason for my recent trip to Britain (and by recent I mean holy cow over a month has already passed!) was the wedding of my friend K. I hadn't seen her since we were roommates in Singapore eight years ago. We have done a pretty good job staying in touch through email and (mostly) snail mail, but obviously we were way overdue for a visit, and her wedding provided a perfect excuse.
A brief detour down memory lane:
In Singapore, K and I sometimes walked down the road to the HDBs (public housing) to buy cheap fried rice and drink Tiger beer. We would talk about our friends and teachers, upcoming school breaks and where we hoped to travel. We would commiserate about the difficulties of being so far away from home and family. Sometimes our conversations would last late into the night. I'd lie in the dark in my bed, teeth brushed and contact lenses removed, and talk to her across the room. If there was a long pause K would ask, "Is this the final silence?" and that always made me laugh.
She was a close friend throughout a very formative two-year period of my life. That is why I was so excited to meet her family and friends, and witness the wonderful changes she was going through. As K herself said, "So many big things are happening that I can't even process them really, and I know I'm not processing, so I'm just trying to hold on to everything to process later when I have the time." (These may not have been her exact words, but you get the gist.)
And it was true - in the week leading up to her wedding, there was hardly a spare moment for K to pause and take it all in. Her soon-to-be-husband J ended his job in Glasgow and they were in the process of moving his belongings to her place in London. Their wedding guest list had somehow, in the hands of his parents, ballooned to over 180, and many of these were calling K with various logistical questions. Guests were traveling from across the United Kingdom and 16 other countries to attend her wedding, and some, like me, had been selfish enough to accept her offer to arrange a place to stay (at her place, in my case). Meanwhile, she had to finalize arrangements for a three-week honeymoon, which they would spend bicycling from Kathmandu to Lhasa.
On the day before the wedding, K graduated from King's College Medical School in London, and then went straight to Kent for the wedding rehearsal and dinner. Amidst all this chaos, she took the time to specially thank me for coming: "Just a visit from you, taken by itself, would be like a very huge thing." (These were her exact words. I remember because I was touched.) The wedding itself was the event of the season, or maybe the year. It was held at the stunning farm home of the groom's parents. Here is the tent where they held the ceremony:
Once the vows had been spoken, rings exchanged and kisses cheered, we wiped our eyes and drank of the celebratory champagne. We made our way downfield to the other tent for the reception. A Zimbabwean buffet awaited - yum! The Singapore contingent was seated at the Norway Maple table in recognition of the two and a half Norwegians among us. (I was the half.)
The eighteen tables were each named for one of the eighteen types of trees K and J had planted around the farm at a pre-wedding tree party. The tree plantings were part of the couple's plan to green their big event. Mother nature repaid them with gorgeous weather. Clear skies over the reception tent:
J's maternal aunts and uncles brought personalized paper cut-out flags all the way from Chile. They looked gorgeous!
V and I had a second cup of coffee as the sun went down. We knew we had a full night of dancing ahead of us, to the sounds of an amazing Zimbabwean band called Harare.
A field away from the reception tent, someone lit the largest bonfire I have ever seen. Stand back, dude with camera!
Meanwhile, family members lit sky lanterns like the one pictured below and released them into the sky. They are really beautiful and on a night like this, if you have had a few drinks, maybe even enough to make you cry.
I had never seen sky lanterns before, and a part of me wondered, 'Is it okay to do that?' Apparently, the wax fuel cells inside are designed to burn for about ten minutes. Then, when they extinguish themselves, the lanterns parachute back to earth. The sky lanterns are made entirely of recycled paper and reclaimed bamboo and are fully biodegradable.
Long after the last lantern had been released onto the wind, the band stopped playing and it was time to say good-night. It had been a fantastic day of celebration, union and reunion. I would travel ten times as far to do it all over again.
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