The worst thing happened to me. My phone gave me the black screen of death. Usually this wouldn’t be a big deal thanks to the cloud, but for some reason they weren’t backed up there. It’s the thing nightmares are made of.

Guys, I lost EVERYTHING. All my contacts. All my notes. But worst of all, I lost ALL of my photos. I had some posted on my social media sites, but all my Saudi wedding photos? GONE.

I’m lucky because my in-laws have some photos, but it’s not the same, ya know?

Anyways, I digress.

When Mamdouh and I got married, it was a simple affair. We just went to the courthouse and signed a marriage contract. Basically it was the Western equivalent of eloping. It was perfect. I definitely knew we would have a wedding in USA, so I wasn’t keen on the idea of having a Saudi wedding. My in-laws really wanted us to have a Saudi wedding.

So we had a Saudi wedding.

The planning was a bit of a disaster and a ton of things went wrong, but I’ll make another post about that later. Right now I want to focus on wedding attire.

I tried wedding dress shopping when I was Qassim, but I had a terrible time. I don’t speak Arabic, so it’s not like I could google dress shops near me or call one up. I did find a dress shop in an outdoor souk, but it was closed. I went around asking the owners in the shops near it if they could tell me anything about it. I found someone that spoke enough English to help me out. They called the shop owner, only to tell me that the shop isn’t open in the winter. They only have it open for “wedding season.”

With my wedding date getting closer and closer, I just went into a formal dress shop and picked a dress. Wasn’t very wedding like, but I was happy with it. It was a tan color with heavy beading at the top. My husband wore traditional Saudi garments- a white thobe with a black and gold robe over it. I would tell you what it’s called, but I honestly don’t know the name. Is it a Mishal? Does anyone reading this know? Can you tell me in the comments, please?

Fast forward a few months, and it’s our American wedding. I pretty much planned every detail by myself, and I wanted to do a nice surprise for Mamdouh. We had a small wedding cake, so I ordered a customized cake topper that looked like us. I send a photo of us on our wedding day to an artist, and she crafted an amazing topper that looked exactly like us, all decked out in the Saudi garb.

Maybe I don’t have a lot of wedding photos left, but at least I still have my cake topper.

Salaam,

KC