Wedding dinner - Groom's side

Mauritius wedding trip - Part 3

A Mauritian Muslim wedding dinner is a unique experience. Hundreds of people invited to some of the largest halls on the Island, expecting to be fed the best beef biryani you can imagine, immediately without delay.

Because of the number of guests and the fact that everyone expects to be served as soon as they arrive; an enormous amount of food has to be cooked on premises, and has to be ready just around the time the guests arrive. There is also an army of servers who then deploy the food often in bucket brigade style.

The biryani is usually served with cucumber and carrot salad as well as a selection of 'zachards' (aka achard ... e.g. mango achard ). A fairly recent type of zachards is 'apple' zachards. However, for me, the unbeatable condiment to eat with a good biryani is zachards tambarin (tamarind achard). Mindblowing ! :-)

The wedding dinner on the boys' side, was held at the Port-Louis Gymkhana. We were welcome by the groom's relatives when we got there, and sat at a table and ate the delicious food. Desert was Halwa dal gram - not my favorite thing in the world.

The hall had a podium where the bride was seated, and guests would go up and talk to her.

As we were about done eating, the groom and his 'posse' turned up in a fanfare and he went up to the podium to sit next to his bride, while the posse sat down to eat.

After most people had dinner, each 'family' then takes turn to go up to the podium to congratulate the couple and take pictures with them.

At some point the wedding cake is cut, but I had fully entered food coma by then, so I cannot quite remember when that happened.

So there you have it. We stayed till the end, when the bride and groom left together in the 'carosse mariaze' (wedding car).