A week ago, I went to my first bachelorette party here! It is called a "henna night".
The bride gave us favors of these purple flower headbands, and mustaches and lip props.
While I don't have other pictures of the bride, she changed outfits 3 times during the night. This is the traditional "henna night" outfit. She wears this and a specific song is played which is supposed to make the bride cry (I think it is about moving far away and leaving her family). They dance and wave a tray with candles above her head (the feathery thing in the picture), and they put a blob of henna on her palm with a gold coin in it from her mother-in-law. Then everyone takes some henna from the tray and puts in on their palm. It leaves a not-so-beautiful blob shaped stain on your hand.
Later that week, we went to the wedding! It was a very nice wedding, and it was actually pretty similar to receptions I have been to in the states. The biggest difference is that they don't really have a ceremony. Their version of the ceremony is a 2 minute signing of the license and stating of vows. Then they have dancing, eating (at least at this wedding they had food), and a ceremonial cake cutting - except the cake is a 10-tiered plastic cake that they pretend to cut with a large sword while fireworks go off in the background.
