EVET!

Wedding traditions in Turkey, much like anywhere else, vary from region to region and family to family. Traditionally, the wedding celebration involves a series of phases incorporating religious or superstitious practices. While in Turkey we witnessed a number of these traditions as guests not only at a beautiful wedding but also wedding-related events. One interesting tradition, for example, involves a friend or relative in an exemplary marriage gifting the bride and groom with their wedding-day undergarments. (In this particular case the relative chosen was the mother of the groom. Awkward.)

In the days leading up to the wedding, ceremonies take place at which the bride’s hands are decorated with henna. I witnessed two such ceremonies, an intimate, family celebration taking place on New Years Eve (as the wedding occurred on January 2nd) and another, more elaborate celebration the next day within a Turkish bath. New Years Even became a combined countdown to the new year and a henna ceremony. After a delicious dinner hosted by the parents of the bride, the women disappeared to the  kitchen, emerging with candles and singing a folk song. I immediately thought it was someone’s birthday until I noticed how unappetizing the candle-adorned cake appeared. Luckily it was no cake, but a mound of henna. Camera flashes lit the room as the women adorned the bride with a red-capped veil with gold jewels. At midnight, freshly henna-ed, we rang in the new year by smashing pomegranates on the back deck. Prosperity in the new year comes to the one who’s pomegranate splits open and spills its contents. I can only assume this is as pomegranates are an expensive waste of a delicious fruit.

The next morning the men and women split up to enjoy separate Turkish bath experiences. Visiting a Turkish bath the day before a wedding is considered an older fashion and not always practiced today. I personally love Turkish baths and find them full of character and history, not to mention the confusing purification of it all. We were welcomed by the crazy ramblings of a cantankerous old man, angry that the bath was closed to men on this morning due to our presence. Within the bath itself I gained a new respect for my extreme-situation small talk abilities after becoming far too familiar with many naked women, while I too was also naked and being handled roughly by large (also naked) women who scrubbed away a week’s worth of travel from my skin. Even Emily Post would be proud.

During our soak and scrub, family members emerged from a side room with another tray of henna, this one more elaborately decorated. As they sang folk songs they draped the bride’s head once more with a red veil and decorated her hands with henna, placing gold coins in her palms and securing the entire decoration with a small red pillow tied to a ribbon which was thus tied around her wrist. The women’s strong voices and tambourine playing echoed joyfully within the steamy and relaxing stone enclave.

Here’s one you might not hear everyday. After the celebration at the bath, we met up with the men at the engaged couple’s new apartment into which they will move after returning from their honeymoon. While touring around I was called away to the master bedroom, into which all the women had gathered, singing songs while grandmothers and mothers made the marital bed. Afterward, the nephew of the groom, who was about one a half years old, was captured and gently tossed in the middle of the bed. Surrounded by a gaggle of singing and laughing women, each reaching towards him and giving a slight nudge in order to roll him around the bed, I could not image what this kid was thinking. Probably, what did I do wrong. This “baby rolling,” as we dubbed it, is a traditional good luck charm for the future fertility of the happy couple. Similar superstitious traditions involving snatching up a child to smear around the bed, preferably a male child, take place in Greece.

The actual wedding ceremony, which took place the next day, is a secular event and generally held within the reception hall. The 500+ guests gathered at a cocktail reception at the large and lovely Conrad Hotel while the bride and groom ate dinner separately. This for them is the calm before the storm, and really their only chance to eat as after the ceremony they must circulate the room individually greeting their hundreds of guests. Because they enter the reception hall together, there is no need to keep the two separate before the ceremony.

After each had taken their seats, dramatic music played and someone on a microphone said a lot of stuff in Turkish. Although we were close to the stage we sat at a funny angle, but luckily there were big stadium-like screens on either side along with a camera on a boom which swept the room as if to hunt you down.

The giant doors swept open, revealing the bride and groom, who took to the stage amongst cheering and the aforementioned most-dramatic-music-ever. At this point much more Turkish was spoken. In basic terms the official asked everyone to state their names, asked the bride if she wanted to marry the groom, to which she overjoyously responded “EVET!” The groom ecstatically retorted the same. The bride, groom, and witnesses then signed the legal document (which we all could see thanks to the super zooming capabilities of the camera.) That was that, they were married.

As the courses were served, the bride and groom greeted guests (trailed closely by their own personal paparazzi) and celebrated their first dance. Typically guests adorn the bride with gold necklaces and bracelets during this time, which she wears for the remainder of the evening. With formalities out of the way, guests, old and young alike, took to the dance floor where they stayed for many, many, many hours. Shots of sugary alcohol were abundantly served and at one point the bride and groom  danced upon American dollar bills which had been thrown about like confetti. Later a wedding cake emerged, wheeled out of the kitchen, which was taller than the bride and groom combined, (and actually made mostly of cardboard covered in icing except for one small section of real cake for the bride and groom to cut.) We left the hotel, sleepily dragging ourselves to the taxi queue, well into the early morning hours, with Turkish dance beats still ringing in our ears and a hell of a good time to remember.