Azerbaijani Weddings

Having attended 3 in a week, I feel it is a good time for me to write a little bit about the Azerbaijani "toy" (wedding).

The first thing that you should know is that, here in Azerbaijan, we like the fun of our weddings to last as long as possible, so we have two weddings for every couple that gets married, the bride's wedding and the groom's.  I find them to be more alike than different, so I'll start with a general description of all the things that are the same and then get into the differences.  The wedding can either be at your house (you set up a huge tent) or at a wedding palace/restaurant (see the photo).  Either way, the family throwing the wedding still generally cooks the food (there is only one wedding palace - the most expensive - in Tovuz where they will do all the food for you...I haven't been to this one yet), which means they have all their friends and neighbors over to help them prepare.  As 2 of the 3 weddings I went to this week were for my cousin (remember, 2 weddings per couple!), I got to go help prepare for my family's wedding, the boy's wedding.  I was mostly just helping prepare food for the people preparing food (yes, you feed the workers that are working on the food...of course) although I really felt like the people I was making food for were really doing a lot more sitting and talking and playing nard - a game like backgammon - than preparing food.  But I  did watch a massive meat preparation process.  By the end of the night, 9 sheep had been butchered (I know because a meat rack was set up and they were just hanging up there after slaughter while we worked).

Toys generally have the same food (the photo is of the starter food...always crepes with ground meat - refried after they are filled to make them extra healthy, chicken, assorted salads - which usually means any type of salad with mayo, but this toy actually had some more vegetable, non-mayo salads...as a person who hates mayo, I was pretty psyched), but that does not make all toys the same.  I can always tell you afterward how good a toy was by how many kabobs I got to eat.  At a smaller toy, they bring one round of kabobs and maybe only one kind, but at others they bring out different kinds and many rounds.  Those toys are delicious, the others just leave you wanting more kabobs.  Most people don't stay until they cut the cake, because you have to last about 4 1/2 hours in for that.

Besides the food, toys are mostly just someone or groups of people coming up to the microphone, saying their "congratulations!" and "let you be happy"s and then that group dances.  So really you spend a lot of time just sitting at a toy unless it is your family, in which case you generally go and dance with each group of guests that dances.  I danced a lot this week as I was kind of family at the 2 weddings (not immediate family, but cousins are expected to dance a lot, let me tell you), and the uncle who was the father of the groom is also my school's director so all the teachers were there to do teacher dances with me.

And that's really all there is to say about the wedding party itself.  You really mostly just sit and eat.  And the music is too loud to even hear the person next to you, so you really just sit (let me tell you, at one toy I was seated right next to the speakers and a night at a toy is really like a less fun night at a rock concert, I left with my ears ringing).

Oh and how could I forget to say that you must go up to the dais where the bride and groom are sitting and have the photographer take your picture with them and then buy the picture for like a manat.  Then you can show all the visitors to your house pictures of all the toys you have been to.  Very important. 

Now for the differences between the two.

For the girl's toy, the groom's family comes to her house with a lot of presents.  They dance (because there is a little band running around with the family) and bring the presents into her house and take photos/video (because every toy has a multi-man camera crew) and then take her off to the wedding palace (or if it's at her house I guess they just stay there...I haven't been to a home girl's toy).  For this wedding, the bride can wear whatever color dress she wants.

For the boy's toy, his family again comes to the girl's house, but this time they take back the presents, dance again, take more photos and videos.  She must be wearing a white dress for this toy.  After her brother has wrapped a red ribbon around her waist and promised her things like to buy her a car or things for any kids she has (he never actually follows through with these promises I hear), the groom's family takes her back to his house.  There, they kill a sheep for her and wipe some of the blood on both the bride and groom's foreheads (side note: I've seen animals killed before, but I felt really badly for the sheep this weekend.  I saw him tied up waiting to be killed and he was shaking and peed himself.).  Then a red cloth is laid down over the blood and the couple walks over it to the house.  The bride must break a plate by stepping on it before entering the house.  And then she is taken into what will be their bedroom which her family has come and prepared sometime in the week-ish before.  The couple will live with the groom's parents for at least a little while after the wedding and the youngest son usually stays with his parents forever.  A few more pictures and dancing and then you go off to the wedding palace.

Coming to the groom's house.  Please notice how poofy the dress is.  This is a requirement of the dresses for both the bride and groom's toys.  It is also mandatory to have lots of fake jewels and sequins of course.

I'm going to be honest here and say I really don't understand the need for two weddings.  They really are basically the same thing, and especially in a place like a village where, since all your friends and neighbors and relatives come to your wedding and they probably know the bride and the groom, that means the same people are at both!  And for my cousin, both weddings were even in the same wedding palace!  As they are only 2 days apart, they aren't even separate in my memory of it!  It felt like deja vu all night the second time around!  The only thing I can think of is that the bride's toy is like a dry run.  This time the groom doesn't completely steal her away, he just drives her around town, sits with her a while at the wedding palace, and brings her back.  But the next time he comes, he brings her to his house, scars her for life by killing a sheep in front of her and wiping the blood on her face, and then who'd want to go home after that?  So he gets to keep her. 

Oh, I also forgot to say that at both toys, there are 2 attendants who stay with the couple.  One from the groom's family who carries a big mirror and the other from the girl's family who carries a lamp.  I don't really know the significance, but I've been trying to learn more.  I'll keep you posted as I learn more.

After the wedding day, the wedding lives on forever because you get a video of the toy from the camera crew and you can then make un-suspecting guests who come to your house watch the video for months to come.  This video follows everything from the stuff I talked about at the houses to repeatedly scanning person by person across all the tables as people eat and to getting close-ups of people dancing (remember how I said in another post about dancing the cameramen love to follow a dancing American?  I've had people run across the room to get the cameraman when I've started dancing haha).  These videos thrill Azerbaijanis.  I find them more uncomfortable, but I watch anyway.

Alright, I guess that wraps up my little (big) lesson about Azerbaijani weddings.  Any questions class?