A Wedding in Dhaka

My friends Justin and Kelly are getting hitched in Thailand over spring break, but they wanted to enter into a legally binding contract as well. Their ceremony in Thailand will be primarily for their families, but they wanted to make it official with the American Embassy. So, a small group accompanied them to a tiny church about fifteen minutes away from Gulshan.

Neither Justin nor Kelly had ever been to the church so everyone was kind of nervously excited to see how this would really go down. Justin and Kelly weren't taking it to seriously because their big moments would be in Thailand and they are understated people in general.

We drove in a caravan of white cars and turned off of the main road to wind through tight roads with beige walls on either side. Finally we reached a dead end and our destination, the Badda Baptist Church. We stowed our shoes in a tall shoe cubby outside the one room church and entered with nervous smiles.
The ceremony was appropriately Bangladeshi, with a group of local congregation members watching the whole proceedings. The pastor's English was a bit uncertain a couple times he slipped into Bangla in order to quiet the spectators or just drop a little joke to them. The rest of us were seated in a row to the left and behind the bride and groom, perhaps so that the congregation could get a good look at all of us. The ceremony itself was a kind of meandering account of the pastor's experience leading up to the marriage. He seemed to want everyone in the audience to know he had been contacted by the American Embassy, and that he was thankful Justin and Kelly wanted to use the humble church.

Eventually he got to the important part, and drew on a uniquely Bangladeshi metaphor of "sharpening iron against iron" to illustrate how Justin and Kelly should work together. Justin chimed in "sharpen my iron, baby"... the goofiness of the whole situation allowed for this kind of joking. They both said "I do" after the pastor mangled a couple of English words that Justin had to repeat. Justin, who was speaking first, had to look over the pastor's shoulder to read the word because the pastor has mispronounced it so completely. The ceremony closed with a heartfelt prayer in Bangla from the oldest woman in the congregation.

After the ceremony we shared sweets and luke warm soda with the spectators, a Bangladeshi tradition. The assembled group took pictures with their phones and warily approached the babies of the newly-weds friends. As we left we took advantage of the lights meant for another wedding to take the picture below.