A few weekends ago, Mike and I went to our landlord's wedding. We skipped the civil ceremony because it would have been 15 minutes of legal Turkish and therefore not very interesting for us. We chose instead to just attend the wedding party, which took place at an upscale hotel in Sultanahmet, the historic and touristy part of Istanbul.
We had no idea what to buy as a gift, and didn't get much help from asking Turkish people. We were told money, gold, and glasswear from a famous Turkish glass company are all popular gift ideas. We went with the cheapest option and bought Taylan and his wife Eda a vase with an evil eye in it. Who knows if they like vases, but they can always re-gift it!
The wedding was catered with amazing buffet dinner- mashed potatoes, beans, kebab meat, meatballs, rice pilav, beef, stuffed grape leaves, lots of salads, grapes, plums, carrot and celery sticks, and an open bar with beer and raki.
There were hundreds of people there, and we only knew the bride and groom and 3 other people- our friends Baris, Pinar, and Baki. We luckily found them right away (Baris has a shaved head and that always stands out in a crowd) and spent the night with them.
There was a gypsy band for less than an hour and everyone danced like crazy, Turkish-style. That means arms out straight, parallel to the floor, and lots of clapping and finger-snapping. I'm definitely not very good at it.
Taylan and Eda arrived, walked all around the reception hall greeting everyone and having pictures and video taken, and then spent the rest of the night dancing. Music was interrupted for less than 3 minutes when a cake was wheeled in, cut by the wedding couple at the speed of light, and then whisked away. Cake was served to the guests, but it wasn't the same cake they'd cut. Then the music was back on and dancing resumed. If I'd blinked, I'd have missed the entire cake-cutting.
The hotel had a roof terrace, and we went up with Baris and Pinar to check out beautiful views of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya. Unfortunately it was raining, but I still managed to get a few nice pictures of the mosques lit up at night.
Our friends all left before midnight, and Mike and I left soon after. Like most weddings I've been to, it wasn't a "social event" really. You talked to the people you knew and no one else. We were glad that we knew other people there, otherwise we'd have been all alone in a corner somewhere.
The morning after the wedding Taylan and Eda left for 9 days in Bali and Singapore- what a good honeymoon trip!
All in all, there wasn't much Turkish culture to be seen in the wedding. Most of the traditions seemed to be the same as at American weddings. Now I need to find a village wedding to attend- that will have a lot of local, non-Western flavor I'm sure. It was definitely fun to be at Taylan's wedding, but I think Andy and Aigul's wedding in Kyrgyzstan will stick in my mind more as a "local" wedding- horse meat, non-alcoholic beer drinking contests, and bad karaoke!
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