Wedding Crashers

This past weekend I got a last minute invite from an American friend to go to a Peruvian wedding. Not knowing a single person at the wedding except for the American girls who crashed with me, was hardly an excuse not to go. We weren´t quite sure when to show up because Peruvian events never start on time, except when they do. And it`s impossible to tell which will be 2 hours late and which are punctual events. We ended up missing the nuptials completely and arrived at the after party right in time for the couples first dance. In Peru, there is one song and one two-step that every does as their first dance. During the dance, mothers, fathers and close loved ones cut in to dance with either the bride or the groom. Within 3 minutes of arriving, the mother of the groom was quite literally pushing me out on the dance floor to dance with the groom, who I had never met before in my life. It was a bit awkward, especially since I was at least 6 inches taller than he was and I felt like I was back in Jr high. The only words I spoke to the groom were "yeah I know, I`m really tall". At least the dance was easy enough I didn´t have to look like a complete idiot.

It was my first all-peruvian wedding and gave me a good look at the differences in traditions and ceremony. In order to show case the biggest contrasts between my experiences with weddings in the two countries, I borrow from comedian Jeff Foxworthy: You might be at a Peruvian wedding if......

You are the only female that doesn`t have sequins or rhinestones on your dress of pants suit.

Instead of doing a toast with a flute of champagne, you do it with a half ounce of pisco sour in plastic shot glass

Instead of being offered chicken of fish, you are given a hunk of pork fat that still has hair on it

The pregnant bride is drinking

There are no tables. Every one sits in chairs along the peripheral of the room and eats with a Styrofoam plate on their lap

Instead of champagne, you pass around one plastic cup between 4 friends and share beer served from 1 liter bottles

The groom invited his girlfriend to the wedding

Instead of throwing rice, rice is served as the main course

There are no soft love songs played, just latin big band blaring so loud on the speakers you cannot be heard even if you are screaming at the person next to you

You get 6 wedding proposals by fat, drunk men twice your age who will not leave you alone all night

If the wedding starts at 6, it is considered distasteful and even offensive for leaving as early as 11

There are mothers subjecting their very small children to the defining music and drunk people until 4 o`clock in the morning

And last but not least, you might be at a wedding in peru if you are the tallest, whitest person in the room where the boys stare at you lustfully and the girls stare at you spitefully. But as long as you don´t mind drinking really cheap peruvian beer with 5 other peoples germs on it, it can be a pretty fun time