Day 8:
Let me explain.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up:
Big day. Wow. It's difficult to even get my head around everything. The day started early: we had to leave at 8:30 to get to the church on time, so I was up at 7:30 and ready to go by 8:30. This being Romania, we didn't actually leave until like 10:30. With all the out of town relatives, plus the god-parents Ovi and Kathy, we had I think five cars heading out to the countryside.
On the way we had to pick up the meat for barbecuing, the cake, and some ceremonial candles that you use during the wedding. So we're driving all over Bucharest in this five-car Presidential Motorcade. Once we had hit the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker (hey-o!), it was off to the village.
Luckily there was no traffic on the way out to the village, so we still managed to arrive in good time. In big fat Romanian weddings, the entire guest list arrives early and helps you set up for the wedding. Thanks, guests! So we had a ton of people there who started setting up tables, chairs, centerpieces, food, all sorts of stuff. It was utter madness.
That is a pair of cars, and a horse and wagon.
Once the wedding stuff was set up, it was time for the ceremonial preparing of the bride. The godmother and the bride's friends all get together and swarm around the bride like little makeup-applying electrons, fixing up her hair and face and whatever else it is that brides do to get ready for a wedding. In this photo you've got godmother Kathy on the right, and then the two Roxannes. They call the left one "Dark Roxanne" and the right one "Light Roxanne," even though they both have dark hair. I don't mind, though, because it gives the whole thing a cool Star Wars-y feel.
Then everyone gets a flower pinned onto their clothing, which like officially says you are part of the wedding. It's like getting your hand stamped when you go into a bar that charges a cover. Even the bride and groom get them.
And then, with all our preparations in place, it was off to the miracle church!
So we all hung out and had music playing (a mixture of traditional Romanian folk music, and modern American rock), and gorged ourselves.
Emma and godfather Ovi
And finally, the ceremonial Shaving of the Groom With A Wooden Knife. There's nothing quite like being told "Sit here" and then some dude comes up and holds a knife to your throat. So, yeah. Shaved with a piece of wood. Don't ask me how that is supposed to work. Luckily I had already shaved myself that morning with a good old American Gillette. U-S-A! U-S-A!
And then, with all our preparations in place, it was off to the miracle church!
30 partying Romanians. 40 liters of beer. 1 pit toilet. UTTER MADNESS!!
We managed to get to the church right when we were supposed to, and I met the priest, who seemed like a nice guy (other than the whole keeping-people-in-self-torturous-ignorance thing shared by all purveyors of organized religion). He didn't speak any English, so Io translated for us. Although I was supposed to get baptized Eastern Orthodox today (because otherwise we can't get married in church), the priest said we could actually put that off a week because I had already been baptized Roman Catholic. Apparently it's a lot easier to just switch someone's baptism than to baptize them from scratch, or something. Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
So then we jumped right into the ceremony. I don't have any photographs of that because I was in it, so I couldn't really take pictures, but other people were taking pictures and I'll add some to the blog as soon as I can. For now, my Shakespearean prose will have to suffice.
I didn't realize it, but an Orthodox wedding is sort of like an endurance trial, like one of those old ceremonies where people would have to starve themselves or hang by hooks. I assume the idea is to make a wedding so unbearable that if you get through it, you should be able to get through any difficulties in your marriage no problem. Also, it probably keeps the divorce rate down, because everyone knows that if you get divorced you might someday have to go through a wedding again. Here are my collection of tips for the Ultimate Wedding of Doom:
* Start off by scheduling your wedding on one of the hottest days of a record-breaking summer.
* Make sure everyone, especially the bride and groom, dress in stiflingly hot clothing. Just as the ceremony is about to start, have an officious distant relative come up and insist that the groom button his suit jacket up.
* Hold the ceremony in a small stone building with windows to let in light but absolutely no ventilation whatsoever. Stained glass windows are great for this because they can't be opened.
* For the ceremony itself, have everyone stand in place for 90 minutes. It's important that people not move at all, because this, combined with the lack of any moving air, means that the air around them quickly heats up to about 100 degrees and becomes saturated with water vapor, thus defeating the body's only natural defense mechanism against overheating.
* Just when people think the air could not get any thicker, break out the incense burner.
* About midway through the ceremony when it looks like the bride and groom are going to collapse, clamp tight metal bands around their heads, like a little iron maiden for your skull. I had actually been looking forward to the crown part of the ceremony: I was going to be King of the Wedding! I didn't realize that they tighten those crowns enough to cause fractures. Although it did have the bonus of conducting some heat away from my head.
* Give the couple some wine.
* Grab everyone's hands and make them run around in a tight circle a bunch of times. Although this will allow some air circulation, the dizziness more than makes up for it.
And then you're married!
Joking aside, having the ceremony in that church was way awesome even though it was insufferably hot. I mean, how many people get married in a historical landmark Genuine Miracle church? Not many, I bet. Mostly because it's out in rural Romania and has no air conditioning. But the building, the paintings, all that stuff was amazing.
The church is also a landmark because it contains some of the only Orthodox paintings depicting God. Orthodox churches and shrines have lots of depictions of Jesus, of Mary, of various saints and apostles and angels, but almost never do they contain depictions of God. The church in Letca Noua has three paintings showing God, so it's considered nearly unique.
After the ceremony, it was back to the village house to par-TAY!
In Romanian tradition, everyone brings a change of casual clothes to the wedding, and changes after the ceremony. Unfortunately this tradition apparently doesn't apply to the bride and groom, at least not until much later in the night after dinner, so I got to eat and dance and socialize in my suit, although at least without my jacket.
So we all hung out and had music playing (a mixture of traditional Romanian folk music, and modern American rock), and gorged ourselves.
Emma and godfather Ovi
Godmother Kathy and various guests
The first round of food was smoked fish, stuffed peppers, olives, pepperoni, kiftelutza (meatballs), and all sorts of other stuff. Then came the main course: mici, sausage, chicken skewers, and a bunch of other things that I didn't even catch. You could have fed the entire continent of Africa with our wedding dinner. For like a month.
What followed was a whole series of Romanian traditions that I knew nothing about. Like, my wife, who as you may recall is herself Romanian, did not even tell me about any of this stuff before it happened. We'd be eating and she'd be like, "Oh, we have to go to the dance!" and I'm like, "...dance?" because I have no idea what this means. But it turned out we just had to go up and jump around randomly while accompanied by Romanian folk music.
Next up: the ceremonial Removal of the Veil. The bride comes out and sits down and the godmother removes her veil and replaces it with a babushka, symbolizing the transition into decrepit cronehood that awaits.
However, the godmother and Em had other ideas...
Chris Pulliam, this one's for you.
We replaced the Ceremonial Dodgers Cap with a proper babushka, and then Emily had to sit for the Replacing of the Veil, where the youngest unmarried woman gets the veil put in her hair. Like me, she had no idea this was coming or even what anyone was doing as they were doing it. It's just like, "Sit here!" and then someone jams a veil on your head. In the background, you can see me and my mother-in-law dancing a traditional hora, which I guess is also part of this madcap veil ceremony business. At some point you got the idea that the people who made up Romanian wedding traditions were just throwing in stuff at random.
So then they tell me to sit in the Chair of the Veils, and I'm looking backwards to see whether someone is about to shank me again, when Grandma Negru strikes like a serpent from the front. This is the Traditional Strangulation of the Happy Couple. They tie this thick scarf-like thing around your necks, which is supposed to symbolize your togetherness, or perhaps how you will want to choke each other to death someday. Maybe both.
After that, it's another hora with the couple, and mom and grandma, followed by...
Carrying the bride over the threshold!
This was made comically difficult by the fact that you can't just carry her into the house, you have to actually carry her into the bedroom. But nobody could agree on which bedroom I was supposed to carry her to (something maybe people should have worked out before I had picked up my wife), so they're all yelling -- in Romanian -- "No, this room! No, that room!" and Io's frantically trying to translate for me as I stagger, Frankenstein-like, from one doorway to the other.
But eventually she was safely ensconced in a room, which brought with it the blessed ability for us to change out of our wedding clothes. Someone had bought us traditional Romanian shirts as gifts, so I changed into that. After that, we partied on late into the night, with music, wedding cake, champagne, &c.
By the end of it all, I was ready to pass out. The guests helped the family clean up, and then we all piled in our cars for the hour ride back to Bucharest. By the time we got back, Io and I were both pretty bedraggled.
Okay, maybe only I was bedraggled.
Congratz !
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