The Wedding in Rio

After a week relaxing in Brazil, we were rested and ready for the Rio wedding we came for…

My iPhone does not do it justice, but I can’t bear not to share a few images with you.

The bride, Cristiana, a Rio native, is a fashion designer, so I should have been prepared for an event so visually stunning.  This girl is simply not afraid of color.

This was our peek of the room from our primo seats at the ceremony, held at the National Historical Museum in Rio.

Mostly lounge seating awaited all 400+ guests, after a sweet ceremony where the priest theatrically quoted Shakespeare, U2 and Pablo Neruda in Portuguese, to be translated even more passionately by the English interpreter.

Dance floor, by Missoni.

And the very elegant couple on it. After a dance lesson earlier in the week, both swore that the other could not dance. Both were wrong!

And so the dancing began and didn’t stop until 5 a.m. (we quit at 3:30), with lots of American music.  Keeping us hydrated at all times were a handful of waiters actually on the dance floor, with endless trays of Caipirinhas, Champagne and Jack Daniels, and frankly — my favorite – tall glasses of fruit juice, both passion fruit and pineapple mint.

Another surprise on the dance floor – a saxophonist who popped up out of nowhere during certain otherwise DJ’ed songs for some awesome solos.

Between the fruit juice and the dessert bar, I am now considering sugar detox.

Assuming these were traditional Brazilian sweets, and wanting to learn all I could about Brazilian culture, I tasted most of the varieties of these gorgeously individually wrapped chocolates, caramels and fruit-filled pastries.

I felt just like this little girl, but I had no nanny there to guide my nutritional intake.

My only regret is not bringing a very large evening bag with built in tupperware.