Wedding bells and (egyptian) bedroom secrets

My dear readers and followers!

In case you were wondering why have I not written for more than 3 months, let me pop the news - Im now happily married! There was the pre-wedding tornado and then the crazy-emotional-stressful wedding week, then my unforgettable wedding day (oh boy, I wish I could do it all over again) and then the after-wedding tornado.

With my adorable husband Salah

I would like to share an interesting and funny story from the pre-wedding tornado time! It was about 2 weeks before the wedding day that I was visiting part of my Egyptian family out of Cairo. The mother of the house called me over in the kitchen to have a one-on-one talk with me. She is a super sweet older lady and she does treat me as if I was her own daughter. I can only expect support from her but I was a bit anxious what she had to tell me, since she made a secret out of it. Im gonna call her Mona from now on.

I will share our conversation with you in a dialogue form:

Mona was standing in the kitchen and peeling onions.
Mona: "Kaidi, is your lingerie ready?" I was confused, what would she mean by lingerie, she did not use the word "underwear". I recovered quickly and realised she means wedding night lingerie.

Kaidi: "Yes Mona, everything is under control". She did not seem content with that answer.
Mona: "Ok, but how many do you have?" I started to understand the real meaning of the question.

You see, in Egypt Egyptian brides have piles of wedding lingerie, it's a custom to wear something new every night for at least a month, to keep surprising the groom. Many years ago I went lingerie shopping with a young bride's sister and she got her literally about 40 pairs of everything naughty, shiny, fluffy, feathery, kinky-shaped etc, I'm sure you got the point. I had to quickly think of something not to disappoint her.

Kaidi: "Yes, I have a few, like 4-5 at the moment" (which was a much better number than the truth)
Mona: "Oh, you need so many more. How much did you pay for them?" Now I was panicking. Since I owned no kinky "made-in-china" Egyptian lingerie I had no idea how much would they cost.

Kaidi: "I think one was about 30 pounds, can't remember any more" (30 pounds is about 1,7 EUR and yes, this is the price of a mass-produced and imported stuff).
Mona: "This is way too expensive, I can take you to a place with half of this price"
Kaidi: "Oh it's because I got it from Estonia, it's usually more expensive there" (a quick white lie). "And Im sure I will have time to buy another 20 pairs very soon"
Mona: "Ok, but since I'm not in Cairo to help you shop, can you perhaps ask your mom to bring you more from Estonia"

Mona is really is the sweetest thing! She means good and I got a very funny lesson about being an Egyptian bride, which I obviously was not trying to be.

Kinky lingerie in a Cairo downtown shop