A Lebanese Wedding – Outside the church

MB has already informed followers of his adventure to Lebanon just before new year for A Lebanese Wedding. The Lebanese public has gone totally bonkers over the story of MB’s trip, and the number of hits on his wedding post is now rivalling Adele’s numbers on YouTube. Seriously!

Anyway, dear followers, MB is very pleased to report that the bride returned from the Maldives some days back and sought out MB immediately to beg for further wedding posts. Not! However, she has given MB full permission to post whatever photos he wishes to feed the insatiable appetite of HX blog followers for further news of the most awesome wedding in the entire history of the Lebanese universe.

Below ladies, you will see the bride in her wedding dress. MB wants to tell you about the dress ladies. It was designed by the famous dress designer, particularly wedding dress designer, American based Philippino Monique Lhuillier. If you haven’t heard of her ladies, MB can tell you that Holywood actress Drew Barrymore, wore a Lhuillier dress at last week’s Golden Globe awards! Both moms, bridesmaid and 3 other young ladies wore dresses by Lebanese designer Atelier Rouba Moukadem. The two moms, in particular, looked stunning, like older sisters of their two children more than moms, in truth!

Unlike Roman Catholic weddings, the tradition at Orthodox weddings is that the father ‘hands over’ the bride to her new husband-to-be outside the church door, and bride and groom walk up the aisle together to meet the priest/s. Additionally, neither the congregation nor the bride & groom utter a single word during the entire ceremony, and the ceremony itself sanctifies the wedding ritual. So there is no “I do”.

In the below photos followers will see the snow-covered Cedar Mountains quite close by, the second city of Lebanon, Tripoli, in the distance, and the scenes as guests arrived at Balamand Monastery, in the northern Lebanese region of Koura, for the wedding ceremony. The final photo in this post is possibly MB’s favourite shot of his entire wedding trip.

So enough chat from MB for the moment. MB will continue the wedding story in subsequent posts. Watch this space! And for God’s sake, enter your email address on top right of this post and click FOLLOW, if you have just happened across this post by some lucky Lebanese/Irish miracle!