The Wedding (Written 12/14/07)

Today was the big day – the reason I stayed an extra week in Samoa. Today was Lorna and Zondervan's wedding…a great event to end my 2 years on. Now of course it was a long day for the bride and groom, but as a friend – it was amazingly long for me as well. Now if you read the previous post, you'll note that I went to bed at around 3am. I had to get up at about 8:30am to get to town and help decorate the reception hall for the wedding at Hotel Kitano. So I dragged myself out of bed, made sure I had my nice clothes for the wedding and headed off to town to help with the decorating. A part of me wanted to stop at the shop to see how things were going on the first day without Eugene, but I knew I had to be focused on the wedding today. So I went straight to the Hotel, where Teuila and Vivienne (along with Tiffany, Matilda and Jewell) were already setting up the place. When I got there, they put me straight to work in terms of wrapping some white sheets around the poles of the dining area. Vivienne was the wedding decorator (of sorts) so the place looked absolutely gorgeous once everything was setup. I got there at around 10am and we weren't done until 1pm. Since we started decorating so early, no one had eaten breakfast and that might have made us all just a step slower then normal but we got the place looking sharp. After the decorating, we went back to the Phillips house to shower and change into our nicest clothes – it's funny how people put on their finest clothes for someone else's wedding. The girls all had new dresses for this occasion. For the past few days, it has been raining on and off in Apia and today looked like it was going to be one of the bright days for the entire day but it decided to rain. It wasn't a bad rain by any means – more of a drizzle, but the sky was gray when we drove out to the wedding venue. The wedding took place at the Piula Theological College (where the Piula Cave Pool is) and this would be my first time inside the church. Jewell and I went with Junior to the church, so I had to change out of my nice clothes to avoid them getting dirty. When arrived, just like Superman, I put the nice armor back on and was ready to enjoy the event. Pastor Ken (Lorna and Zonder's pastor from the Every Nation church in Auckland) flew in just to be a part of this occasion. He wasn't able to get his wedding license for Samoa, so Pastor Samoa co-handled the wedding as well.

The Piula church was a lot smaller then I expected – from the outside, it looks absolutely huge but inside there's not a lot of space. The church was literally overflowing with people trying to find seating for the ceremony. About 20 minutes after we arrived at the church, the wedding party showed up. Zonder and his groomsmen were dressed in a sort of bright yellow shirt with ie faitaga's (the formal Samoan lavalava). But of course, all eyes were on Lorna and her stunning white dress (her bridesmaids were dressed in light yellow puletasi's). As she was walking down the aisle, I was just taken aback that this day was finally here – Zonder and Lorna are actually getting married. The ceremony was pretty short and sweet – they said their vows, had their first communion together and lit their unity candle. The funniest part came when Pastor Ken told Zonder that he could kiss the bride. At first, Zonder just gave Lorna a quick peck – it was so fast that no one could catch a picture of it. Pastor Ken had to tell Zonder to do it again so the camera's could get a shot – so he went about 5 seconds instead of 1. It's just his conservative nature coming out – hopefully he was saving the best for later. And now where two stood, only one couple stands now…I was glad to be there for the union of Mrs. Lorna Fa'alafi and Mr. Zondervan Fa'alafi. After the new couple walked down the aisle, some guy got up and started speaking to the congregation…since most of the guests are not from Samoa, they couldn't understand what he was saying and left the church to say congratulations to the new couple. He was trying to say thank you all for coming and that there were some light snacks available in the back garden of the church. But I was just ready to go and get a rest in before the reception. So Junior, Jewell and I headed back to the Phillips house for a bit before heading to the reception at 6pm.

We were one of the first people to arrive at the reception at around 5:45pm and thus we got pretty good seats towards the front of the reception area. A common feature of Samoan weddings is to have a cake that is built out of tiers (not going straight up like an American wedding, but kind of spread out)…sometimes these tiers can get out of control and you can wind up with a cake that has like 20 something tiers. Lorna and Zonder kept it simple and only had like 10 tiers which is reasonable. So we waited about 30-45 minutes for the wedding party to arrive before the reception ceremony could begin. Once they arrived, we went through the typical wedding sections – their first dance, the cutting of the cake, etc. There were a few features of the reception which were very much Samoan – Lorna and Zonder both having their families get up and doing a Samoan dance with them, the bridesmaids doing a Siva Tiene, Lorna's nieces doing a Taupo dance at the end and Lorna's year 8 students doing a special dance. The service was in both English and Samoan (but mainly Samoan, which was kind of a poor decision since most of the guests from overseas probably didn't speak Samoan) but was well done.

Overall, it was a great reception and after the reception came the party part and we all had a good time of dancing and hanging out for this special occasion. Also, my day began with putting up the directions and my night ended with us taking down the decorations during the dancing part. That was my plan all along, keep my clothes nice and clean for the majority of the day and at the end get them sweaty and dirty. This was definitely worth staying an extra week for and I'm glad to see the happy couple off – I don't know what their plans are in terms of a honeymoon or anything like that, but hopefully I will see them before I leave. With the wedding done, all that's left is the waiting….Monday is the big day, and trust me – odds are good it's going to be another amazingly busy day.