Mehndi Party

The night before the wedding, Nathaniel and I headed over to Sukhvinder and Sunny's beautiful new place for the Mehndi party. This is the gathering where the ladies get their hands painted with mehndi, or a henna mixture.

Nathaniel noticed that it was really just girls getting painted, so he hung out on the couch with his Gameboy. Until...

He realized that most of the men were upstairs practicing tying their turbans, since only Gurmukh (the bride's brother) wears a turban regularly. Nathaniel wanted in on the action. They didn't quite have one long enough for him, but he loved having his mini-turban anyway.

Very regal.

So proud.

Apparently, hoding the end of the wrap over your mouth is a good way to keep it out of the way until the end, or Gurmukh is simply very sneaky and knew how to keep Nathaniel quiet for a few minutes. ;)
Meanwhile, most of the ladies were getting their pretty mehndi, but Sukhvinder definitely had the most. And she was so chilly, that it was taking forever for it to dry, so Gurmukh brought down his hair dryer to speed the process along. Her hands were covered on both sides and her feet, too. And until it dried, she couldn't eat or walk around. Poor thing!

So pretty!!

I had it done on the tops of both hands, too, but of course have no pictures of that. I received several comments on the interesting color of the designs of my hand. I kept holding up my hands and saying, "White girl, remember?"

Jokes aside, I felt so honored to be included and welcomed as a member of the family for all of the wedding festivities. Sunny and Sukhvinder and their relatives really went out of their way to make sure that Nathaniel and I were well taken care of and never felt lost in the sea of relatives.