Wedding Leftovers

There are lots of negative aspects of weddings in Oman, but in this post I’ll just focus on food leftovers.

“Ladies, dinner has been served. Please help yourselves”

And this is how it all begins. From 40 tables or so, the glitter-faced skinny-gowned flab-repressed ladies of the Omani community semi-walk semi-jog to the buffet like hungry children. They try to still look pretty, with the masked smiles properly plastered upon their faces, and walk head high, heels high, straight to the crowded queue.

Both the variety and amounts of dishes are astonishing. I wonder; do we really need all this? “Oh of course we do”, says the ladies of our community. Or else others will reckon us rudely stingy. Or else the society will pity the newlyweds, thinking they started off being poor, God only knows how they’ll survive. How will the newlyweds get any respect later on? The buffet, among the other ridiculously priced parts of the wedding, has to be plentiful, eye-catching and extremely inviting. So much so, that invitees would start pouring in food on their plates without thinking, without hesitation, without really being hungry to start with!

And the disaster comes to action. Put a bit of this, a spoonful of that, one of these little bites, and a good serving of this, this, this and yes… There, that one! A really good portion please! Back to their seats and their eyes start to wonder. Why have I put so much? I don’t even like vegetables. And urgh, I don’t want to eat both rice and lasagna today – I’ll just leave the rice aside. Slowly, but effortlessly, they pick out their favourite 5 dishes out of the twenty ones stuffed in their plates, and decide: it’s OK to throw away most of what they’ve just, just, dished up. It’s OK to make this decision. They easily excuse themselves, allowing multiple unreasonable reasons to be temporarily reasonable: Everyone does it, it’s not healthy anyway so I don’t have to eat it, there’s plenty more for everyone else, blah blah blah.

Well I’ve got news for you my dears, IT’S NOT OKAY.

It isn’t! Do you have any idea what the end result looks like?!!! Well I couldn’t resist myself to take the following photos. I’ve been to a few weddings recently and I decided enough is enough. Look at them and tell me what you see:

Ladies, come on. You know you’re better than this. You know that when invited to people’s houses, you wouldn’t leave half your plate as full as weddings. I’m not sure about the men’s side (although I do hear that they have many leftovers as well). But you don’t HAVE to taste every single dish available. You don’t HAVE to put a heavy portion of all the different meals. Try holding yourself! Think for a second or two before pouring those humungous servings. Resist the temptation. If it turns out it wasn’t enough, there’s no shame in adding some more. I’m serious, there’s no shame, even if others tell you that in fact there is. Think with your brain and heart, before your eyes and appetite. And most importantly, TRANSFORM THE TREND.

Cheers!