Moroccan Wedding……….Fez, Morocco 2007
Did I tell you I hated audience participation!!!
It was an organized dinner for foreign tourists at a local Moroccan residence. The house owner turned his inside courtyard into a restaurant. The themed dinner was titled “A Moroccan Evening” complete with fire eaters, snake charmers, belly dancers, magicians, acrobats, drummers who twirled the tassels on their hats while playing their drums. The food was good, the atmosphere was very Moroccan and everybody was having a good time. The last act for the evening was to invite a man and a woman from the audience and dressed them up like bride and groom and have a traditional Moroccan wedding as the program finale, to complete this festive dining experience.
When I first arrived for the evening, I dashed for the last table at the far corner by the kitchen and sat next to a column, trying to look as inconspicuous as I possibly could. Knowing with live entertainment, there bound to be audience participation. In fact, many tourists volunteered for Moroccan folk dancing, assisted in magician’s acts, tried out Moroccan musical instruments, etc.
Of course, my plan of “this audience not participating” backfired and I was picked, forced to play the bride. They grabbed my arm and dragged me to the wardrobe department upstairs. Worse, they picked the guy who sat next to me as the groom, nothing against Corey, he’s a nice guy, except he and his wife (in real life) were on their honeymoon and Michelle was sitting on the other side of Corey at the same table!!! Why couldn’t they pick her instead!!! I even yelled “That’s his wife, pick her…..” With all the loud music, either they could not hear me or they just ignored me. Needless to say, we were the joke for the rest of the tour.
Good grief!!! They put layers upon layers of colorful robes on me, tied a shield to my chest and hung gold and silver jewelry, gold chains and everything on the shield like I was a display case for a mobile jewelry store. To top that, they tied some rectangular head gear/bridal decorations on top of my head…and when it was all said and done, I looked like a Cleopatra-Flying Nun. I was supposed to be a Moroccan bride! My costume was so bulky and heavy, they had to help me get up from my seat. I told Corey, eloping was out of the question, all these gears they put on me were too heavy to even walk to the washhroom. But then, our eloping would be well financed.
Next, the emcee and the stage hand walked us downstairs and put us on stage. So I sat there and smiled, and occasionally laughed out loud and let people took pictures. But the story got thicker….the next thing I knew was the emcee asked for my hand, he led me to a round wooden plate and told me to sit down. I hesitated for a second because with all the gears, I was thinking how to position myself to sit on the floor without falling. He suddenly pressed hard on my shoulders and I literally folded my legs and fell onto that wooden plate on the floor. 3 Moroccan men and 2 Moroccan women hoisted the wooden plate with me and all my “belongings” up on their shoulders and started spinning me around. I screamed “HELP”. But everybody was clapping their hands yelling “Good Job Shirley!!!” I had a good laugh but still hated audience participation J
