Saturday morning we joined a caravan to Iza’s house. We followed windy roads for an hour and a half. We kept thinking we were almost there for the last hour. Everyone stopped for a minute to decorate the car. They even shined the tires. At Iza’s house, Iza’s nephew was barring the door while Marcin and his friends bartered about the dowry. Marcin’s main selling point seemed to be the quality of the vodka he was offering. We didn’t understand much else, but it seemed at one point that Marcin was offered Iza’s niece for the dowry and he said no.
Then we were invited inside Iza’s house for the blessing by the parents. Marcin and Iza knelt down on a white sheet and both sets of parents one after another put their hands on the kids’ heads and said a blessing to them. Marcin’s dad mainly just mussed his hair. Elisa and I were lucky to be there for this intimate tradition.
At the Polish-Catholic ceremony we again thought it was almost over and then waited a long time. The church echoed really cool. And it was interesting to see all the ritual involved. When Marcin and Iza exited the church, their friends threw handfuls of pennies on them. And then they had to pick them up. One of the traditions apparently is to bring flowers and then to give them to the bride and groom. Oops.
Marcin and Iza threw a reception at a hotel. At the beginning, everyone was handed champagne. Marcin and Iza had glasses tied together. After they drank them, they threw them behind them and the glasses crashed all over the floor. Their friends organized a program of games and dancing. We have never been entertained at a wedding for so long. We got there around 3 pm and partied until we were too tired at around midnight. There was course after course of food getting brought out every time we sat down. We learned some really fun dances and they had a special appearance of Polish performers. There were crazy dances. Most of them involved us running around in a ring. We did dancing lines and a chicken dance even. We played games where people got dressed up in silly stage props. I can’t describe all the stuff that went on. There was a bowling alley right in the hotel and some of us played a game.
A few of the family and friends did some songs for the party. They grabbed Elisa and asked her to sing “Love me Tender” on short notice. By the way, I don’t really know that song. We don’t know how they knew that Elisa sings either.
