Wedding preparations Saturday, April 28, 2007

Anne Ginn (right) shows her parents how to start the water heater so they can take a shower.


As any bride-to-be knows, there is a lot of preparation involved in a wedding. That holds true in Mexico, although the list of things to do is a bit different.


In Mexico, instead of having a wedding party, the couple has padrinos, which each provide a service for the wedding—music, transportation for the couple, or flowers, for example.


And instead of having the reception catered, the family and a few friends helped cook the entire meal. Hence, the lettuce in Anne´s fridge (see yesterday´s post). In the morning, a party of about eight women chopped tomatoes, cheese and lettuce for the salads.


Meanwhile, Alberto was running all over town, trying to get signatures required to make the wedding legal, making sure the tarp and tables were set up properly, trying to buy some shoes for the wedding, and picking up the fresh chicken for the women to prepare.


Alberto shows his frustration with preparations at the wedding site as he reports back to women making salads for the event. The tarp that was installed was smaller than he had ordered, dirty, and poorly installed, so he had to make last-minute arrangements for a new tarp.


Anne´s friend (and some kind of relation) Viki used to do catering, so she organized the preparations. It was all cooked at her house, with her small kitchen, dining room table, and outdoor barbecue. It probably didn´t meet North American standards for food safety, but the food hasn´t killed anybody (yet).






















Chicken scraps were fed to the kittens.
(right) After cooking a test meal, Viki decided that the chicken needed more salt.