the mehndi II

My godmother found the fastest mehndi artist in the west to do my designs. She didn't take any breaks longer than 30 seconds, either, and we both were sitting there for a little more than four and a half hours. I had henna on the front and backs of my arms, from elbow to tips of the fingers, as well as around 75 percent of my legs and the tops of my feet. She didn't even skip the backs of my heels.

See all those tiny dots? Each one done by hand. She was really good. 

My mom has always said my most beautiful feature is my feet. I get them from my dad, who got them from his dad. I always meant to take a picture of all our feet together because they're all so creepily the same. My hands are my mom's and my nani's in the same way. I can't get that picture anymore, either.

Tradition calls for the name of the groom to be hidden somewhere in the mehndi of his bride's hand. Then the guy has to try to find his name. My mehndi artist was very clever and Jon wasn't able to find his name for more than seven minutes until I had to drop some pretty big hints. But then again, she had thrown in an extra H to make it "Johnathan" instead of Jonathan.

It's in the curve between the fingers and thumb of my right hand, and way easier to spot before she did the top of my hand.

Arms done. Shiny. They put this sugary stuff on to keep the dried mehndi from fallling off, so it would stay in contact with the skin and give a nice deep color. 

I liked the feet the best.

It was great to be able to get up and walk around after nearly five hours, trust me. But I still couldn't move too much. EB fed me a bunch of watermelon and another heaping helping of fried rice at the end of the night. People had been coming and going all day, and at the end of the night Jon left to have pre-Bachelor Party dinner with his family. My family trickled back home bit by bit until it was just my mom and I, EB and a couple of their other family members and my godmother's house, sitting around and resting after a wonderful day. There's that bit of time at the end of your party where you sit back and take in just how great it went. To me that's even better than the actual party, which I usually spend worrying about how everything is going. I was so overwhelmed by everything people were doing for me, I couldn't do anything but just absorb it. Sort of like the henna dye on my skin.

It's hard for me to believe I didn't take any pictures of the mehndi right after I washed it off, but there were still about 50 bajillion things left to do, so it's easy to think it slipped my mind. They say that the darker your mehndi comes out is an indication of how much your man loves you.

I already know how lucky I am to have Jon, but it's nice to get a little confirmation. This photo was taken the day AFTER the wedding--a full three days after the mehndi party.  And it stayed nice and dark until about a month after the wedding.

Jon had set up a tripod with his camera to take a photo every minute. My friend A.A. also took a bunch of supplemental photos with his other camera (a lot of which were in these last posts). Thanks, A.A.!