The Wedding Dinner at Kebab Cafe

With Chris and Estelle, Zora and I took a car to Ali’s. We were fashionably late. Hey it’s our wedding dinner; they’ll wait. Ali says his place maxs out at 25. We got 27 in there somehow. But I don’t think we were all sitting down at the same time.










The traditional wedding… pies. Nicole made these with Tamara’s help. Nicole makes the best fruit pies in the world.


The, uh, bride and groom.


Egyptian brothers. Ali issued a command for everybody to pace themselves. There was to be a lot of food. Actually, it was the perfect amount of food, I thought.


It was raining hard outside. And hot and humid inside.





After a few rounds of food, people started taking tables and chairs out into the street. Zora and I got worried. We never would have approved a belly dancer, had we been consulted. It was all Ali’s doing, and it did set a nice tone for the whole evening. She was the real deal, from Egypt, and with impressive stamina. Zora liked the fact that wasn’t skinny “like all these phony belly dancers.” She explained: “When they’re too skinny, you’ve got nothing to watch!” She’s thought about this more than I have.


I’m not sure what this transaction was about.


This one’s pretty clear though.








Estelle was very cute and really loved the belly dancing.


No wedding is complete till the bride is dancing with money slapped on her forehead.


post belly dance.


kissy-kissy


lovey-dovey


By the way, that’s a great map behind me. It’s from 1918 or something like that and has the block-by-block ethnic composition for all of Manhattan.


I was making some toast. It didn’t match Jim’s earlier toast. He brought us all to tears. Despite there being no rings and Jim not being at the actually wedding, he nailed this part of the Best Man job.

So there Zora and I are standing on chairs. I’m going on about friends, love, food, blah, blah, blah…




Then we toast and Zora proceeds to fall backwards into the bathroom. Class-y!
But she managed not to spill her wine, which actually was kind of classy.




This was right before the fall.





The rain stopped.


The ever popular Katie (and Joel).





Chillin’ at the bus shelter.





Aaron, ladies’ man.





Joel, John, and Deb.





The tiara made its rounds. But then so did Tamara’s bra.





Yeah, like you need another... bottle.


There were about 38 bottles of wine between about 27 people. Results aren’t final yet, but Tamara is by far and away the favorite to win the celebrated award for most hung-over the next day. I got off surprisingly easy. But the walk home was pretty drunk and surprisingly difficult. Zora, meanwhile, had to be at work at 10 or so. I slept till 1.