After 8 hours in a mini van with my family, 2 flashes of life before my eyes and seeing a lot of the FLAT Saskatchewan landscape, getting lost a couple of times, we arrived in Regina on Friday in one piece.

Why would we ever go to Regina you ask? Naveen and Sneha's wedding OF COURSE! (why the hell else would you go there? ;) )

As soon as we got there, we got decked out with the outfits and the flashy jewelery for the first event of the weekend - the garba (pronounced garrrr-ba... roll those r's). The garba is a party where you go and dance around in a huge circle. Everyone that attends does the same dance and has a good time. When i say everyone, i mean EVERYONE! Young, old, guy, girl, little kids, teenagers, everyone. People come up with little mini routines that you do repeatedly and switch it up now and then. After the garba part, comes the dandiya (pronounced dhan-di-ya). This is dancing with sticks! how much more fun can that be! You grab a partner and stand in a huge 2 ringed circle. You do the mini routine with your partner then switch! You go around in circles endlessly, trying to add some flair to the basic routines like spins, little jumps and different ways of hitting the dandiya sticks.

After the garba-ing (yes, i can make anything a verb!) the "kids" [read: all of the people from the groom's side that was 18+, but mostly the "association" kids] went out to test out Regina's night life. but! before we could do that, we were hungry. the food at the garba wasn't to every one's liking so we decided to ambush the local Micky Dee's. I swear that was the most brown people that establishment has ever seen. We took over half of the restaurant. i think it was beautiful. We then headed downtown to a local club, but there was a 15 person line up. In Regina?! WTF mate! screw that! So we went to the club next door, Soho. It was SKETCH and there were about 10 people in the bar. Oh well, we were about 20..so it didn't matter. We had a good time none the less - did some dancing, had some drinks, chilled. All in all, a good night and good to hang out with the ACA (read: Andhra Cultural Association) folk.

We went to bed too late and woke up way to early. Do you know how much work it is to put on a sari!? But, we did do it! That's right, 4 girls got up, got ready and had saris on and were EARLY for the wedding at the Delta! The groom's family had asked us all to come early so that we could be apart of the procession. As soon as we got there, we were clicker happy. EVERYONE was taking pictures. Picture a grad banquet of Indian people of all ages taking a ridiculous amount of pictures. Yes, that mental image should sum up the morning exactly. The bride's side welcomed the groom into the family with a garland and with sweets. We then all went upstairs and into the hall for the wedding. The wedding mandabam [read: stage] was gorgeous with flowers, lights, fabrics - the whole 9 yards. Indian weddings last about 4 hours usually and is all in Sanskrit so no one has any idea of what is going on. Luckily, this wedding ceremony was about an hour and the priest actually explained it all and was joking around to make the ceremony meaningful and entertaining. The bride was beautiful! Not just pretty, but beautiful. The whole wedding was out of a Bollywood movie. Sadly, the food was less than spectacular after the wedding so we had to eat at the random cafe that was in the hotel - yes, stale sandwiches.

The afternoon was lazy: we visited some family and then took a much needed 2 hour nap. Then the craziness of getting ready for the reception started. There were last minute costume changes and alterations; hair style and make up changes and general crazy. But we did make it! and we started to take advantage of the open bar... as soon as we got there. The food was spectacular, definitely making up for the rest of the weekend. There was even a chocolate fountain! and you know you cant go wrong with that! The MCs itself were dripping with cheeeeese but the speakers from the groom side were amazing - totally MAKING the reception. Then began the dancing. It was off to a weird start with some bhangra/techno remixes. But the music got better and we had a blast! we even did the Cadillac Ranch in our saris! It was awesome. All of the Reginas [read: people from Regina] thought we were CRAZIES (well we are..but meh). There were even wedding crashers! A bunch of 16 year olds from the wedding next door decided to come over because our party was way better and dance it up. It started to get weird when they started bumpin and grindin... its an Indian wedding guy! So, finally the bar closes, the music stops and the lights turn on. Typically, people would go home at this point, ya? wrong. Our boys decided they needed to arm wrestle. This led to one guy BREAKING HIS ARM! that's right! we had to go to the Regina ER because there was a broken arm from an ARM WRESTLING MATCH. Who does that? The ghettoness of Regina is really shown by this following statement: there were TWO MICE spotted in the ER. MICE?!

After making sure the victim of the freak-arm-wrestling-accident was well taken care of, we made the long trip home back to Edmonton. There was a lot of sleeping, some sing a longs and a lot of comedy.