Blerta Gets Married Day 2

I'm going to let the photos do most of the explaining in this post -- there are a lot of them!

The Mother-of-the-Bride and her mother

The Bride's baby brother stayed busy documenting the day.

Friends from the center (they take English classes) and are school mates of Blerta's!

Our abundantly supplied lunch table

The 'Head Table'

The brides parents and grandparents welcome the guests.

After all the guests were brought in and seated, the bridesmaids entered waving red scarves.  Then a flower girl and ring bearer sprinkled flower petals before the bride who was brought in by her father.  They immediately danced. (If you are reading this via e-mail, the embedded video will not show -- click the link at the top to view this post online to see the videos)
Caution!  Turn down your speakers!!!

Father-Daughter Dance

Then the dance floor opened and everyone who wanted to got up and danced while Blerta watched from the head table, accompanied by her brother.  Contrary to the photo below, she actually was almost always smiling.  I don't know how she did it, but for 5 straight hours, I hardly saw her not smiling!  Shortly after this photo, she left and changed gowns.

About an hour and a half into dancing, the groom's family arrives to a standing ovation and more music and dancing.

They all sat together at a large table in the front corner of the room.

Here is a video of the groom's entrance (only 0:43)

with the mother-of-the-bride

The couple came and greeted each table.

Her hair was a work of art!

I need to interject here with photos of food.  I'm not sure that I could adequately describe all the food we were served, so here's a collage (which doesn't include photos of the bowls of bread, fruit, and platters of grilled vegetables and bruschetta):

Only the Tave dish in the upper right was a shared dish.  Each of those other plates were food just served to ME during the course of the reception, from 12:30 until we left around 5:30.

This table, cousins to the bride's father, warmly included us.  There were the parents, their four daughters and 3 sons-in-law.  I think we could have really enjoyed visiting with them except we were so close to the sound system, it made conversation difficult.

Side note.  Whenever we turned around, there was a waiter refilling our beverage glass.  At the conclusion of our 6 hours at the wedding, Nathan figured out that he had consumed 2 liters of Coke, or more than 800 calories!!!

Xheni and her new fiance`.

Several hours after the groom arrived, the couple finally joined the party on the dance floor, and people started throwing money at them.
Or sticking it to the groom's face or putting it on the bride's head.

The cake was wheeled out to the tune of the wedding march, lit with candles and showered with bubbles.

We're not sure what they cut because the cake was actually just a box with icing on it.  We were all later served ice cream, which suited me just fine!

Then out of no where, a group of children runs onto the floor in costume, as you see below.  They start dancing with the bride to 'Everybody Dance Now.'  The only song of the day in English. ;-)

I was very confused until this character walked in with a basket of apples.

Yep, you guessed it.  They were acting out Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  (Side note: did I tell you about the one time I told someone here that Ellie liked "White Man and the 7 Dwarfs"? in stead of Snow White?  Yes, the other sounds kind of disturbing.  It would be less surprising if you knew that  'snow' and 'man' are only 1 vowel different in Albanian).

So the Prince is brought in to revive the dead princess.

And like that, the wedding was basically over!  The groom's family all departed, taking the groom with him, leaving the bride with her family and friends.  For us, the wedding celebrations were over.  But for the couple? No, they still had Days 3 and 4 to go!   On Day 3, they would repeat it all over again, but with the groom's family and friends! Then on Day 4, the bride pays her last farewells to her parents and family.

I tell you, as much as I respect tradition, I don't think I have the stamina to do what they do here! ;-)

I hope you enjoyed this little re-cap of our first Albanian wedding experience!