Don’t worry, I’ll keep the account of this wedding shorter
than the last. Thankfully (as you might
imagine) a lot of the traditions are the same between the boy’s and girl’s
weddings so that well help.
The day started much like the other wedding day, except this
time in a lot more relaxed fashion since we only had to make sure that we were
ready and not the entire wedding (it was Etibar’s family’s turn to worry about
all that!). We made our way to the salon
for our hair (and my make-up since I knew, and had it confirmed for me, that I
would be given a hard time if I only got all Azeri-qəşəng for one wedding). On my way home from the salon, walking by
myself, I had a good laugh when I a man stopped me to ask where someone lived
and it was clear that he thought I was Azeri until I told him I was a guest in
the village – for someone who usually sticks out so much here, I always get
excited when I somehow blend in (this time my camouflage was ridiculous
quantities of eye shadow and fake lashes apparently).
Ramina got home from the salon not long after us and we had the
obligatory photo session until Etibar arrived.
For the groom’s wedding, the bride always wears white (for the first
wedding, it is her choice what color she wants to wear and it can be white, but
the white dresses are generally more expensive to rent). It was generally agreed that Raminə looked better at this second
wedding than the first (Azeris love to make comparisons! Especially really awkward ones!).
Need
to have an evil eye somewhere when you’re looking that beautiful! It’s just begging for jealous eyes to bring
harm to you so you gots to have that protection!
Unlike at the girl’s wedding where the couple left soon
after Etibar arrived, this time there were a lot more rituals that had to be
performed before they could go. First my cousin (usually it
would be the bride’s brother but since she doesn’t have a brother it was our
cousin) tied a red ribbon around Raminə’s waist, promising to buy her a crib
when she had her first child (sometime the promises are more outlandish – a
refridgerator, a car, etc – and usually something different is offered
depending if the child is a boy or a girl – with the presents for a boy being
better, obviously). Next my mother came
and tied a handkerchief with money around Raminə’s hand. Usually the handkerchief has a good amount of
money in it, maybe $50-100. This time
ours had that, but also two coins. When the
girls’ father died and his things were sent back from the clinic in Baku, there
were 6 coins in his pocket. Apparently
my sisters talked then about how on their wedding days my mother would give
each of them two of the coins like they came from their father. My mom was pretty emotional every time she
would go to speak for the wedding video at our house (before the girl’s wedding
I think all she managed to get out was “Let them be happy” before she got too
choked up) and almost couldn’t get through it again this time, so I was pretty
proud of her. Then the last thing was
that my uncle led Raminə in a circle around a lamp on the floor. This was the lamp that her yengə
(essentially the older, married female relative or family friend assigned to
help the bride throughout the ready and in preparation for the wedding night –
in this case, Raminə’s
aunt, Vüsalə)
carries throughout both of the weddings.
It obviously has some symbolic value, and I remember asking about it
when I was living here before, but I feel like no one could really explain it
to me (that, or I just forgot) so sorry, I can’t explain it to you. The groom has a similar female relative from
his side (although I don’t know what their responsibilities are seeing as I
feel like they don’t have the same advisory role…) and she carries a mirror
that I also don’t really know the reasoning behind.
When
Raminə and Etibar left, this time instead of going straight to the
wedding, they had to drive to Etibar’s house.
None of the bride’s family usually goes, but they arranged a car to take
me along so that I could see everything and take pictures. This was the first time Raminə had ever been to what as of
that night would be her home, so that’s pretty cool. She had seen the pictures that I took the day
we carried all of her dowry over there and set things up, but had never
actually been there. Apparently these
days some brides who are a bit inappropriate go over to the groom’s house
before the wedding, but in talking to me about this, my sisters indicated that
this was clearly shameful and older women especially judge these young brides,
so we couldn’t have any of that.
At
Etibar’s house, there was a whole other set of rituals to go through: first a
sheep is killed before the couple and a bit of the blood is put on their
foreheads, then Raminə had to step on and break I believe 3 glass plates, then
they sort of waved some bread over their heads – I don’t remember seeing that
one before so that was new to me. Then
we took a few pictures and were on our way!
This
wedding as a lot tamer than our wedding, less dancing and all that (I know I’m
biased, but our wedding was definitely the better of the two – and people
around the village seem to agree with me).
As the family of the bride, we are supposed to be more reserved and sort
of shy/embarrassed at the groom’s wedding, so we didn’t really get to do very
much dancing except when we were called specifically to speak/dance. The good part about not dancing, though, was
that I got to eat way more kabob at this wedding :) which always makes me
happy. There was a lot of debate over
whether or not the bride’s family should stay until the end of the wedding or
not. We ended up staying (although my
mom left a bit earlier). Everyone seemed
to be using the narrative of “Jess wants to stay” to justify our continued
presence (despite the fact that everytime they would ask me if we should stay
or go I would tell them that I would do whatever they wanted us to do/felt was
appropriate, not wanting to bring shame to the family or anything like that)
because secretly they all really wanted to stay.
The
end of the wedding was fairly anticlimatic because, after about 6 hours of loud
music and way too much food, pretty much the only people still left were the groom’s close
family and our family. Raminə threw
her bouquet (I think they got this idea from American movies) but apparently in
Azerbaijan anyone can catch it, so my middle-aged, married, male neighbor
caught it. Then Etibar and Raminə each popped a huge
balloon with their name on it which had been used at both weddings for
decoration on the daises where they sat (they spelled Etibar’s name wrong on
his balloon – Ehtibar – so that was kind of disappointing, especially since it
was wrong then for both weddings!). Once
all that was done, they set off for Etibar’s (and now Raminə’s!) house and we went home and
crashed! These weddings are exhausting!
View from the dais during the wedding, you can see the back sides of the huge balloons on the pedestals (you can’t see the spelling mistake on the other side from here).
