My First Armenian Wedding

This weekend I went to my first Armenian wedding.  It was quite different than any wedding I had gone to in the states.  A young girl I work with was marrying a man from a nearby village.  Our village only has one wedding hall, so the couple had one reception in our village and another reception in the other village.  Hundreds of people were at our reception if that gives you any idea of how big a combined party would have been! First, the couple married at a church, but as so many people were invited to the wedding most of us just waited at the reception hall.  I sat with a few other girls who work at school and we spent the afternoon eating, drinking and dancing.  I was yet again forced to dance, but this time I managed to get off easy with only one song.  People were constantly toasting and dancing.  There is even a special song/dance when the servers bring out the khorovats (Armenian barbeque)!  

One of my 12^th grade students was at the wedding and managed to morph our class discussion into the differences between Armenian and American weddings.  They think Armenian weddings are better because there is more tradition involved.  I think American weddings have a lot of traditions too, just more superficial than Armenian ones.  For example, after the wedding the mother-in-law gives the couple honey and fruit to help their marriage become ‘sweet.’  I tried to explain different American wedding traditions, but the classroom favorite was the honeymoon. Honeymoons are not common in Armenia because the bride usually moves in with the husband’s family the night of the wedding. Sounds awful right? Chances are a couple will never get to live alone, especially in a village.

P.S. I went into the kitchen last night to get a glass of water and heard scratching.  I turned on the light and saw a poor little mouse stuck in a trap.  I called my host father to the kitchen because I didn’t know what to do.  He picked up the mouse with tongs and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to throw the mouse into the wood burning stove.  Thankfully he took it outside, but who knows what happened outside.  I think this the first of many mice to come into the house this winter and I will be living in my oblivious world where the mice go free in our garden J

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!