Druze Wedding

With wedding season coming up, I seems like a good time to share an experience at a wedding that I attended here in Lebanon.

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So my buddy says to me, "Do you have suit? You're going to a wedding."

The wedding was in the mountains, so we had to leave Beirut early in order to get there in time. I woke up about a half hour before I was supposed to be picked up. After a hasty shower, I murdered a bowl of Chocobumps cereal in about 45 seconds and made for elevator. We needed to move if we wanted to reach the village on time, but somehow I finagled a stop at Dunkin Donuts.

We began our ascent into the mountains of Lebanon to the village where the bride was from. She lives in Beirut, but the tradition is that you always go to the bride's family village to greet her. Here is the process: everyone from the bride's side goes to the brides village to get her and escort her to the groom's village, where all his people are waiting. Once the bride is delivered safely to the groom, everyone travels back to the bride's village together for a small ceremony, before the reception, which in this case was back in Beirut.

At the brides village, we were among the first ones to arrive. The place looked good, but was still under construction. Apparently, everyone from the village puts in as much money as possible, when possible, and they build the hall bit by bit. It looks about 78 percent complete at this point, but the location is money- on the side of a hill, overlooking the a valley. The view was incredible.

The bride and the groom are of a religion called "Druze". Most people outside of Lebanon don't really know about it, but the Druze believe in reincarnation, and consider themselves Muslims even though they don't necessarily practice the five pillars of Islam. They exist pretty much only in Lebanon and even here they make up only a small percentage of the population. They live mostly in the mountains and their societies, though friendly are quite closed. Druze men are expected to marry Druze women, and such was the case today.

After some refreshments (juice and sweets) we all embarked to the groom's village. A procession of about twenty cars or so wound its way through the hills of Lebanon. Once there, everyone walked the bride into the function hall, which had a pool and was also on the side of the mountain, providing another stunning view. Here, the hired traditional dancers danced up a storm. One of the guys' hand drums was so powerful it was setting off car alarms. We had some more sweets before we all headed back to the bride's village to do the same thing there. When we arrived there, one of old dudes from her village decided to take out his side arm and empty a clip into the air in celebration. My buddy Oussama said that in the more remote villages, it would have been an AK47.

Once things were wrapped up at the brides village, everybody split for an intermission from the festivities where people could regroup and freshen up before the reception. The women went home to change outfits. The old people who weren't comfortable with drinking and dancing just went home for the night.

Bride's village, groom's village, bride's village, Beirut. The distances are small on the map, but since we are driving around in the mountains, everything takes much longer. By the time we got back to Beirut, my buddy had already done about five hours of driving. We were pretty hungry and this point and we weren't sure what the dinner situation was going to be so we rolled to the mall to hit up the food court.

After a nice meal, we headed for the reception. It was being held at the Intercontinental Phoenician, one of the swankiest joints in Beirut. In the lobby of the grand ballroom, I saw servers walking around with trays full of glasses full of ginger ale. Ugh. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that this was not ginger ale at all, but tall glasses full of whiskey on the rocks. Up until this point, things had been kind of conservative and pious, but now, out of the villages and back in Beirut, things were loosening up. My mouth began to water.

Eventually, the bride and groom arrived and the real reception began. I walked into the ballroom and it felt like I was on a movie set. No, literally a movie set. Like with stage lighting, sound guys, and one of those video camera things that some guy has to sit in to operate. This main camera could maneuver over the dance floor getting all the best shots. I was amazed at the production value of all this. Throughout the night there were traditional dancers, smoke machines, camera crews, and even some pyrotechnics that had me making sure I knew where all the exits were. I'm pretty sure I saw a director arguing with some surly looking teamsters. It was like an Arab soap opera and the whole thing was really impressive.

There was a huge buffet dinner, so luckily I was starting to get hungry again. The meal was ridiculous and the drinks kept coming. But I was good, I drank a Red Bull and a glass of water between each glass of sweet, sweet medicine. In my opinion, I totally maintained and I was mildly impressed with myself. But I had to, I was there as an observer, and I only knew one person there, neither of which was the bride or groom. No, I had to explain that I was a friend of a neighbor of the bride. Needless to say I got some "what the f*** are you doing here"-looks, but on the whole, everyone was incredibly friendly and warm and I definitely felt welcomed.

At the end of the night, the cake was cut and people started to disperse. It was weird how different the whole second half of the day was from the first. The morning was so traditional and conservative and the night was the opposite, with tons of eating, drinking, and dancing. It wasn't quite as off the hook as some weddings in the States get, where towards the end of the night you can find people hooking up, making out, and throwing up (hey, its still the Middle East), but it was damn fun and I was impressed. The Druze really know how to throw a party.

And if you want to see what you missed, I am pretty sure the video of the wedding will be airing on Lebanese Bravo sometime this month.