This last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to experience my first foreign wedding. My roommate of 4 months, Matthew Shaw, married the love of his life, Edit Shaw. Matt tried to explain time after time that Hungarians know how to throw a wedding. That it makes the ones back in the States look more like a tea party than a wedding. And he was more right than I could have imagined.
The wedding was held in a town of 15,000, near Edit's home village in Eastern Hungary. There were about 200 people in attendance, 50 or so being Americans. In Hungary, the weddings are a giant party, starting even before the ceremony. Here are two important facts. First, they have a master of ceremonies that runs the show (funny guy). Second, the wedding lasted 14 hours, start to finish.
Starting at 2:30pm everyone meets at the resort we having the non-ceremony parts at. The bride and groom show up and greet everyone and then after an open bar and buffet there is a ceremony were the bride and groom say good-bye to their families, the hug and kiss because as of today they are starting a new family. It was a really cool tradition. There is where the two families approve of the union of give their children up to start a new family.
Then at 4:30pm we went to the church. It was a Catholic wedding, held in a 400-year old church that has recently been renovated. This place was incredible. So beautiful and to add icing to the top, it wasn't just a Priest doing the ceremony, it was the Bishop of all of Eastern Hungary. This guy just happens to be Edit's Uncle and this was one of the 3 weddings he will perform in a year. Beautiful, ancient church, wedding conducted by a Bishop. Already I don't know how I will top this wedding. It was a full mass, in Hungarian, which made it that much cooler.
After they are married, everyone goes outside and greets the bride and groom and then we take a giant group picture. (Why don't we do that in the States?) Then we head back to the resort for the party.
We start off with our first full dinner. 4 course meal, plus desert. Oh yeah, the open bar is still going too. We eat, listen to speeches, the master of ceremony tell jokes that do not translate well and have a good time. (This is where I start drinking palinka....)
After an hour or two the dancing starts. And everyone dances. The oldest of the old and the youngest of the young. There is a live band playing, mixing Hungarian music with American. All the while we continue to enjoy the open bar.
Around 11pm my favorite hungarian tradition starts. At some point during the wedding the groom's friends must kidnap his bride and create a feat that he must overcome to win her back. Normally, they make the groom drink a bunch of shots, or sing a song. But Matt had given me the responsibility of planning this one and I will not let him down. I decide this is where we mix America with a hungarian tradition.
We kidnap Edit off the dance floor (about 15 of us) and wait in the hallway as the Master asks Matt where his bride has gone. After a few minutes we are called back in, except this time his 15 friends are armed with plastic swords and shields. I present Matt a plastic sword, shield and axe. I tell him that his friends approve of his bride (thus why we stole her), but now he must prove he is worthy of her....by defeating all 15 of us in combat. The band kicks on the euro techno music and the fight begins (see my Facebook page of the video). After a valiant battle Matt manages to slay all of us while unharmed and goes and retrieves his bride, a hero.
The Hungarians loved it. They had never seen something like it. The Master of Ceremonies said he had never seen anything like it, but liked it so much he will be including it in his info packets for ideas for future weddings that hire him. That is right, I helped start a possibly new Hungarian tradition.
After this we continue drinking and dancing. Then at midnight they bring us our second full dinner. The midnight dinner. We eat, dance and drink some more. Matt says, drink till you are drunk, dance till you are sober and eat till you are full and just keep repeating this process.
At around 4am there is only about 5 of us left on the floor and the party shuts down. So it started at 2:30pm and ended at 4am. I don't care if a marry a Hungarian girl or not, I want a Hungarian wedding.
Best. Wedding. Ever.
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