During my recent trip
to Krabi, one of the occasions that I truly enjoyed during the wedding
celebrations was ‘The Welcome Party’.
It was the family
wedding I was attending, and welcome party is the occasion where one gets to
meet new family members and friends. Naturally, to break the ice, one had to be
innovative. Every occasion had a theme, but the welcome party had an
interesting theme. There was a dress code for fancy dress; the guests were expected to dress in
the character that begins with the first alphabet of their name.
Since the first letter
of my name begins with ‘P’ I decided to dress up as a Peacock. That would mean,
looking for peacock feathers, stitching a proper dress and doing the right
make-up. I was able to find peacock feathers at an art store. I stitched the
feathers on my blouse that was dark blue with pink embroidery. My friend had gifted
me a bunch of about 24 peacock feathers to take it with me to Krabi. It would
look good to use them as a cape and maybe dance. But my brother warned me
against it. He said it was illegal to carry peacock feather to Thailand. I am
too afraid to do anything illegal and hiding it in my suitcase (as some friends
advised) was the risk I was unwilling to take. Therefore it was just few
feathers here and there. My cousin volunteered to do eye make-up and that was
good enough for me.
So I went to party in
long netted pink skirt, a long scarf, peacock-feathered blue blouse and
colorful makeup with feathers stuck over my brows and some in the hair band.
I was satisfied with my
appearance till I met others. There was creativity everywhere, some dressed up
as TV characters, some as deities, some as Hollywood stars and some even as
fruits.
My niece was dressed up
like a doll with a proper eye-makeup, and beautiful blond hair. It looked
strange to look into her eyes, they looked like glass eyes and she kept
blinking like dolls do.
Sometimes I had to look
really hard to recognize the face. My niece made funny faces and actually
resembled Crazy Susan that we have seen in TV serials.
My cousin was dressed
up as Charlie Chaplain, and he walked, limping all the time, cracking joke
mostly one-liners.
Everybody was in a
crazy mood, clicking pictures in every pose, saving the memories for another day. Every guest was dressed boldly in a fancy dress, each matching the first initial of their name with the respective character they represented.
The party had just
begun….
