Parties

It was a weekend of celebratory events: I attended a wedding and a dance recital. Since part of my job is to study how people interact and the larger patterns in their behavior, I was struck by the ways that culture came through in the ceremonies.

The wedding was at our Unitarian church, where the couple had met. The wedding was pretty similar to most Christian/ non-theistic weddings that I've attended. But there were some small differences: the invitation included a note about the diversity of invited guests, and thereby (gently and very subtly) implied that if this was a problem for anyone, they should keep their mouths shut. The meal was completely vegetarian, and the whole thing was beautiful yet frugal.  The music was a special treat - a jazz trio of high school students who had only played in public once before.

I also went to my first arangetram, which I would roughly describe as a dance recital/ graduation /religious ritual. A dancer studying bharatanatyam, the classical Indian dance style I'm learning, may do her arangetram after a decade or so of study. It's similar to a small wedding, or graduation, or quincenera (sorry - I don't know how to get the correct tilda on the 'n'), because it's a great big celebration that's also a rite of passage. The parents rent a theater and hire musicians, you send out save-the-dates and invitations, and family flies in from all over the world. There were about 200 people in attendance, the student danced beautifully for two hours, and then we had a great Indian meal.