My First Wedding!

OK- so I'm going to attempt the impossible here- I'm going to TRY to explain to all of you my experience at an Indian Wedding this morning....OK here it goes:
This morning I woke up early again- when my host mother knocked on my door to get me up I was wide awake. Possibly because I was excited for the day ahead, and possibly because I'm still having trouble sleeping. Anyways, I got up and got dressed in a new outfit (my host mother lent me a really pretty red shalwaar suit for the wedding!) and had some choco-milk (this choco-milk has been my wake-up drink almost every morning since I've been here!). My host parents and I then left the house and drove to another kind of ceremony- a house warming ceremony!
After a few minutes there we all got back in the car and returned to the apartment for a few minutes before my host mother's sister and her husband picked me up to take me to the wedding. The wedding started at 9:00 a.m. and immediately from walking in I thought "wait a second- has this been going on all night?" The reason I was confused was because the wedding was in the same hall decorated from last night, and the music was still going!
My host mother's sister (whose name I cannot hope to spell, but it is pronounced like "Wa-San-Tea") led me in through the crowd and up a flight of stairs, "We'll go see the bride!" she told me. We got to the top of the stairs and went into a small room with a bed, and about fifteen women inside. The bed was covered in plates heaping with chocolates, candies and other sweets- and then I saw the bride. She looked so beautiful- wrapped in a white and gold Sari, draped in strings of colorful flowers, and decorated head to toe in gold jewelry. The room was buzzing- women stressing over the bride, women stressing over one-another, and women stressing over the plates of sweets. We took some pictures together after I was introduced to everyone, and then the REAL photographers came in to take some shots of the bride. After the photographers left, everyone assembled together and the plates of sweets were handed out- one to me too...I was confused at first, but then I realized that the bride wanted me to take part in this tradition of all of the women taking plates of sweets to the bride-groom to "coax" him back to the hall to get married! We all lined up and started a procession down the stairs- the drums keeping a steady loud rhythm at the head of our group. We walked down through the hall and then outside to the street where we had to ALL cross the street to get to a temple directly ahead of us where the bride-groom awaited.
We all filed into the temple to find the groom sitting at the front of a shrine to Ganesha with a blanket at his feet where we placed the plates of sweets. The bride-groom was then offered the sweets by some of the women and then he was blessed by the priest before getting up and leading our whole procession back across the street to the wedding hall. At the entrance to the hall we stopped, and the bride-groom's feet were washed off before entering. (Throughout the day when I asked some of the girls near my age about traditions, their answers were always "they have been happening for so long, even we don't know what they're for!)
We all filed into the hall and took our seats to watch as the groom went to stand on the "alter" (I guess that's what you would call it...it was a gazebo looking structure where the bride and groom sat together throughout the ceremony). A short while later, after the groom was there, the bride was walked up to the "alter" and they both sat down side by side facing the audience. For the next hour, many traditions were carried out by the couple and the priest, including lighting fires, being blessed (many times), and walking around the "alter" three times tied together. The final tradition (that signaled that the two were married) was when the bride-groom tied a yellow string around the bride's neck (all married women have them).
After those ceremonies, some of the crowd filed into the room next door to have breakfast on palm leaves, while the rest of the crowd stayed in the marriage hall and talked. For the next few hours we all sat around and talked- me and a few of the girls near my age at the wedding. They all had beautiful henna (called mahenti here) painted on their hands, and I was only too excited to accept when one of the girls offered to do it on me! My host mother's sister, her husband, his sister, and her son and I took a little outing then to get a henna cone. It only took about fifteen minutes, and when we returned the girl and her sister got to work on my hands- I had to leave it on for a few hours (therefore eating lunch soon after was a little difficult for me!) and when I arrived home a short while later most of the hardened henna had fallen off.
The wedding is over for me, but not for everyone else! The wedding will continue at the bride-groom's house tonight, and will probably last past midnight- these Indians sure know how to have a long party! Maybe next time I go to a wedding I'll be able to explain a few more things, but for now that is all I could take in from today!