A Wedding in Nicaragua

The first night I was in Liberia, Elba and Nieves told me that the family would be going to Nicaragua for a wedding on the weekend of June 16th and asked if I would like to go.  Always one to enjoy weddings, new cultural experiences, and excuses to add a stamp to my passport, I gladly accepted the invitation.  The plan was to leave for Nicaragua at 10am last Saturday and we would return on Sunday evening (actually, the family wanted to stay until Monday, but I was supposed to start classes this morning so I couldn't.  Today I learned that my classes will not begin until next week, but that's a whole different story!).  Anyway, we didn't end up heading out until around 2 because there was some car trouble and this is, after all, Costa Rica.  Things definitely don't run on a tight schedule around here!  So around 2, Don Hernan, Nieves, Elba, Luis and I crammed in to the car and rode over to Cece's house to pick up the five cakes she had made for the wedding (we were driving so we could transport the cakes....otherwise I think we would have bussed it), and then we were off!


It takes a little under two hours to get to Penas Blancas/the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border from Liberia and when we arrived, we had to fill out "exit" paperwork in CR.  This means that some random person comes up to your car, fills out an immigration form (like the one you fill out on the airplane coming in to CR), and then you go inside and have everything stamped by the dude behind the counter.  Because we were driving, Don Hernan had to get approval from somebody else to go across the border, which more or less equated to making sure everything we were bringing from one country to the other was good to go.  Then we all crammed back in to the car (did I mention that we were holding our luggage since we had to make room for the cakes in the trunk?) and drove like five minutes until we were in Nicaragua.  Here, we did the same thing, only in reverse.  More people filled out forms and we all went inside to pay our $12 entry fee.  We were actually stopped in Nicaragua for a while while the dude helping us ran from place to place getting approval for us to take our car and our cakes in to the country.  I took the opportunity to snap some pics of immigration.  Sadly, it's not a very interesting place, so the pics are not very interesting either:

By the time we made it through customs and to the little town of San Pedro, it was 5:30.  We originally thought the wedding started at 6 (eek!), but it actually started at 7 so we had just enough time to change/get ready and go.  We were staying at one of Nieves's sisters houses (the mother of the bride, actually), and when we got in to town, it was POURING rain, so I had to run back and forth through a gigantic puddle when we got there.  It's a really good thing I had a change of clothes!  Anyway, we arrived at the wedding, found our seats and took some random pics while we waited for it to begin.  The wedding took place under that little archway thing and we all just watched from our tables.  The lights changed colors, so it wasn't always blue!  Also, these pics don't really do it justice, but it was actually a really cute set-up, with a dome-ish ceiling, and was partially open on the right-hand side so it was warm, but you could still hear the rain.  Pretty cool.

Once the wedding was over, they started bringing out the food.  First there were like chicken taquitos and a little salad thing (so good), and then a plate full of random food (meat, pork rinds, yummy salsa, random cheese, tortillas, etc) that the table shared.  I tried all kinds of new stuff and it was all delicious!  Finally, they opened up the buffet table and we all had even more delicious food.  I was so full by the time the wedding was over!!!  And in between, we were drinking some cheap champagne and they put a gigantic thing of "coka" on all the tables.  Coke is kind of a big deal here:

In between courses, Nieves took me around to various tables to introduce me to her family.  Did I mention she comes from a family of 10?!?!  Her mom is from Nicaragua and her dad was from Costa Rica, and the kids are sort of split between the two countries, though most live in Nicaragua which is where they were born/raised.  There were eight girls and two boys, and I met all the siblings except for one girl and one boy, along with all their children and their children's children!  A solid half of the wedding party was just her family! And the family is just as nice and welcoming as Nieves!!!  Although I can't understand everything, the family is super nice and welcoming and very funny!  While we were doing our rounds, we also stopped to take a pic of all the cakes, which looked great.  Interestingly, they didn't do a cake cutting at the wedding, so I never actually got to try them (sad face! I love CAKE, not that I would have been able to eat anything else anyways!!)

When we weren't visiting Nieves's family, they were visiting us!  There were like 5-6 super cute little flower girls running around, and I became besties with one of them.  Her name is Nessie (for short) and she  turned out to be the sister of the bride (Maria).  I think she thought it was fun that I couldn't speak Spanish very well.  She would sometimes get annoyed that I couldn't understand her, but then she also liked to point at random things and tell me what they were (like, chair - silla!) ha, so funny and so cute!  She was dragging me around and made me take some pics with her sister.  That was funny because I had spoken to Maria for like two seconds when we got to her house and felt like such a wedding crasher, but she was totally sweet:

And of course, you need to see a pic of the beautiful bride and groom.  For the ceremony, Maria had on a really pretty full skirt, but afterwards changed in to this little short skirt, which was adorable, and smart/necessary since it's so freaking hot here!!

All in all, the wedding was super fun and it was great to meet more of my host's family!  The ONLY downside was that there was no dancing!  Can you believe it?!?!?!  For the past two weeks, Elba and I have been getting excited to bust a move at the wedding, and in the end, we couldn't, despite the fact that they were playing some good tunes all night.  Turns out, they decided to have a "Christian" wedding, which apparently means no dancing.  Even Nieves and Elba thought that was a little crazy, but oh well!  So sad, but still so fun!  After the wedding, we all just went back to the house, hung out for a bit and went to bed.

The next day was a lot of fun too, but that's going to have to wait for my next post...