Second to last post about Ena's wedding and the beautiful state of California :(
The bride's henna, can you make out the figures?
Wedding accessories handed out at the Sangeet, beautiful glass bangles:
The beautiful bride to be at the Sangeet:
I have never been to a more beautiful wedding! Everything was planned out perfectly and decorated so ornately:
The wedding ceremony, the morning of day 2. The mother and father of the bride waiting for the husband's family to enter. How beautiful is the mother of the bride? And she looks just like her daughter!
The barat-the wedding procession of the bridegroom and his family, with the groom on a horse:
Aarti- The groom's family is welcomed by the bride's family at the entrance of the wedding festivities:
Everyone heading up the escalators for the ceremony:
Program which explained the ceremony and traditional practices in great length, so helpful!
The food at Ena's wedding this weekend was amazing. Apart from oatmeal breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday morning, all meals were Indian and absolutely delicious. Maybe one day Ena can comment and let me know what the names of everything were, I know what was in each dish just about but I can't begin to remember the names of each.
Everything just about was vegetarian all weekend so I didn't really have to think twice about what to eat and had so many options, it was wonderful :)
Meal 1, lunch at Ena's house:
Appetizers at the Sangeet, there were others but these spinach dumplings were my favorite, had a great little kick.
Clearly dinner was good, I forgot to photograph before stuffing my face!
Hotel breakfast of oatmeal. Oatmeal made by someone else is one of my favorite things, well oatmeal made right that is...the consistency of my quick oats just never comes out right.
And coffee and an apple to snack on later.
Lunch on day 2 featured a spinach dish and an amazing cauliflower dish, Ena if you're reading this please post and let me know what it was, I would love to have it again!
Dessert-an indian rice pudding
Getting ready to go out both nights we sipped on this Californian Merlot
For dinner the last night I went all out and tried some of everything, who knows how long until I have such good Indian food again!!
And there was wedding cake! Oh and not just wedding cake but a huge chocolate fountain which I gladly dipped a strawberry into, yum!!
While Sarah was getting her fill of turkey I was celebrating my friend Ena's wedding! It was a huge 3 part 2 day ceremony and I want to share so much of the experience so I'll post in parts.
This post will focus mostly on friends of the bride and my beautiful dresses from Rent the Runway ;) which I highly recommend for everyone.
For those unfamiliar with Rent the Runway take a look. Basically, they offer high fashion dresses from the current season that you can rent for a 4-8 day period. You select a dress you like, they send two sizes along with a second look just in case you don't like the first (second dress is at a very low price!). This worked out perfectly for me because I needed multiple dresses for the weekend.
Dress 1:
Night 1, the Sangeet
More friends and looks from Day 2, the wedding ceremony
My dress for Day 2:
We got a little antsy while waiting to head over to the reception on night 2 and started taking photos of one another.
Still ahead, the food, the dancing, and most importantly the bride!
I'm hoping I Might be able to keep up with this: a Christmas song a day! Whatever interests me that day will be the song. So yesterday, I was watching The Muppets Christmas Carol. What a great movie! There are tons of original quotes from Charles Dickens' book, and it's just a great version! My favorite song of the movie is "One More Sleep 'Til Christmas." There are tons of other great songs in there too.
How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was great! It was spent with lots of friends and family. The day before Thanksgiving, I made pumpkin pies. Just classic ones, nothing too fancy. I find that most people like to have classic foods for Thanksgiving, nothing too out of the ordinary. Anyway, since I knew we were going to be overeating on Thursday, I made a nice vegetarian soup for Wednesday night. It was Rachael Ray's Red and Green Winter Stoup. Filled with potatoes, onions, kale, tomatoes, and pureed roasted red peppers, you don't miss the meat! I served garlic parmesan toasts alongside for dipping. Yum!
On Thanksgiving day, I made my second dessert to bring to our friends house where we were having Thanksgiving. I chose to make individual apple tarts, and to try out my new mandoline! I practiced using it on an apple I wasn't using for the tarts, and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The recipe made 8 tarts, and I cut out mini turkeys and apples from leftover puff pastry as a garnish.
While I was baking, I looked out the window to this scene, more appropriate for Christmas day:
Snow!
My Thanksgiving meal included: turkey, mashed potatoes (secret ingredient: bacon grease!), green bean casserole (not my fav., but I took some anyway), creamed onions (never had them before, but they were pretty good!) sweet potatoes with praline topping (my favorite part of the meal!), stuffing, corn, cranberry-orange relish, and crescent rolls. After that one plate of food, I was pretty full! No seconds for me, I saved room for dessert!
Have you started listening to Christmas music yet? I admit, I've been listening to it for over a week now. I feel like they play a lot of songs over and over again, and when there are 1,000's of holiday songs out there, they should have more variety. However, driving home from babysitting yesterday, I heard a song I've never heard before and I really enjoyed it! It's a song from a live concert by Dave Matthew's Band. I'm not a big fan of the band, but this song was great! What do you think?
Next starts my holiday baking for the season, which is my favorite part of the holidays! Any suggestions? I bake new kinds of cookies and other treats every year. Have a nice week everyone! ~Sarah
I'm keeping this post short and sweet because I'm exhausted! I've been up since 2:50 am ET, and left my apartment at 3:30am for my morning departure to San Francisco. I made it to the Bay Area at bit after 9 and to my hotel by 10am. After digesting lunch (it was 1:30 pm ET by the time I ate and I was starving) I called family and friends and wished them a Happy Thanksgiving and began to wander the city.
Nontraditional Thanksgiving lunch of an egg white and spinach wrap and green tea from Starbucks-thank goodness there was one in my hotel!
I'm also thankful on this Thanksgiving for getting over my cold right in time to board a 6 hour cross country flight and for the opportunity to explore a new city.
My New York legs took me around from the Civic Center to Fisherman's Wharf, back and more...some photos from my exploration follow.
Okay, off to bed. Need to wake early and get some serious work done on my grant proposal before potentially going to Gap for Black Friday deals and then meet friends to head to the second destination of this West Coast trip.
Nicole
