Getting married
Part 2: Getting ready for the wedding

October 31 , 2005
iranian.com

I was walking around with a smile on my face that could not be wiped by the mere travesties of daily issues. Work seemed more pleasant than usual, my father's constant computer questions seemed to bring me more joy than annoyance and my daily work out routine at the gym seemed to breeze by. Actually the daily work out routine really did breeze by since I had gone from an hour work out at 5 am to a 45 minute work out at 5:30 am. That extra half hour of sleep seemed to have been life much sweeter. Had I known then what I know now, I would have savored those minutes so much more.

I thought -- rather naively -- that my part in the wedding had been done. I did the major task of asking the girl and she had said yes. I would go around bragging about my accomplishment and did not listen to my coworkers who mentioned that my real troubles were about to begin. I knew that I no longer fell into the category of being "SINGLE". No longer was I going to be the third wheel when I went out with friends. I was no longer a "me", I was now officially a "we" or an "us" better yet I was part of a "unit" and the ring sealed the deal FOREVER.

After a week of walking on cloud nine, Naz shattered my reality by a rather disturbing announcement. Naz informed me about all the work that was ahead of us. (Did she say work? Us? What was going on? There is more work for me?

As I tried to comprehend the words that were coming out of her mouth she handed me a list of all the people we would need to meet with to get the ball rolling. I looked at the list and guess what; it was not a short list. The list that my lovely wife-to-be handed me consisted of over two hundred names, address, and occupations. She even went as far as organizing them into categories and sub-categories. She listed hotels, caterers, photographers, videographers, Sofreh lady, cake person, pastry person, aghed (marriage administrator), flower person, invitation people, dress makers, tuxedo options, music managers and a host of other people that I could not keep track of.

I tried to take charge of the moment and said that I would take care of the aghed. Feeling that division of labor was rather fair I proceeded to make a list for myself. I figured I would be done with this task in a matter of minutes. Both my father and my grand father are agheds and performed Iranian marriage ceremony. I just had to choose which one would perform the ceremony. Alas this came to be a bigger issue than I anticipated. Would I let my grandfather who performed my parents' wedding do mine? Or would I have my father who in a sense had taken over the reins of the business do our wedding?

After two weeks of waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat due to wedding nightmares, I decided to ask the most knowledgeable person I knew for help, my grandmother. Like a well trained soldier she sprung into action and within 15 minutes setup a meeting with the Sofreh lady and the caterer. With these two major tasks behind me, I called Naz to give her the good news. She was ecstatic and told me that her friend, Negin, who was assisting her with wedding locations, had made reservations with a banquet hall close to Naz's house.

Wow -- things were finally moving in the right direction. Perhaps within a week we would be done with all our vendors and could relax for the next year. We would be the new king and queen of wedding planning. Then we could write a book about the experience and make millions off the idea. I wondered why no one else had even thought of this? Who the heck even needs a wedding coordinator?

Saturday morning, I arrived bright and early at Naz's house so that we could go and meet the vendor and see our "future wedding location". The place sounded rather impressive and my father, who had performed a few ceremonies there, informed us that it was a pretty good location with ample free parking. That was very good news. Often when you hold a wedding at a hotel, you worry about the parking situation. Would there be an extra fee to worry about? Do you have the guests valet their cars? Does the site have a parking lot free of charge for guests? Is it tacky if we do not pay for the valet parking? All these etiquette questions would be resolved if we had the free parking.

We followed the directions and ended up in a strip mall near Naz's house. Panicking, I asked Naz if the directions were correct. I had followed them exactly and the address seemed right. So we looked around and located our "future wedding location". My father's single focus for free parking had made him forget to mention that the location was sandwiched between a 24 hour mini-market and the local DMV. As we stared slack jawed at the location we were nearly hit by a student driver who was taking her first exam at the DMV. Judging by the frightened look of the DMV instructor I do not think she passed her exam nor was that the first mistake she made.

We tried to stay up beat and made our way to a parking spot near the front area. I have to admit my father was right; it did have ample free parking

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