After a beautiful Easter Sunday, Sue, Naomi and I spent a few more days at Rose's apartment prior to her wedding.  The groom, Temidayo, came back from a guys weekend in New Orleans, where they went to a Pelicans NBA game, some museums and some jazz clubs.  The five of us spent the next few days together.  Naomi and Rose seemed to spend a lot of time steaming the various Nigerian wardrobe we would all be wearing.  The ladies got their nalis done, and I juggled out in the apartment quad several times, and we talked and laughed a lot.  

One of the days, we met with the person who would be leading the Nigerian part of the wedding at Temi's mother,Rosalyn's, house, where we also met some of the other relatives,and watched some videos of other similar services.  Although it all was very foreign to us, it looked fascinating and beautiful.  We learned that a Nigerian wedding follows the paternal blood line, which means we were going to follow the customs of Temidayos' father's tribe.  Even though Temi's dad is no longer in the picture, it would be offensive to follow his mother's tribal traditions.  Also, Rose's bridal party needed to be her peers or younger, which meant her older sisters could be maids of honor in the first wedding, there needed to be younger girls in those roles in the African one.  We learned that there would be a lot of prayer and worship in both services, and even a traditional African drummer in the latter one.

While all of this fascinated us and sounded amazing, in a few days we were to learn that, like so many things, in life, the reality would be so much more glorious than the description.