Wednesday 9 August 2017

Wedding

There was a big wedding in the village today as Marianna's daughter Elena turned 21 and got married all on the same day.  We met Elena the first year we were here when Marianna held a coffee morning and charm offensive around the time of the elections (she is the Mukhtar's clerk and he, in turn, is her father-in law).  Elena was then around 14 years old and in my mind has remained the same age so I thought she was still a teenager - not quite so young but 21 is still young and she is marrying a boy from Inea so her horizons will not be stretched - bearing in mind the apparent antagonism between the two villages maybe this was a sort of attempt at bringing about an Entente Cordiale!

This was to be a massive affair as I had seen a notification of the event posted in a local paper - a general rally call to all and sundry to come along which meant that there could be several thousand people pass through the wedding reception handing over their money envelope and paying their respects.  A tiring day for the happy couple but a lucrative one nonetheless!


We opted to attend just the reception having been to several weddings previously so we were familiar with the traditions like the shaving of the groom and the inscribing of the bride's friends' names on the soles of her shoes.  These are great to watch once or twice but in this heat were a bit much and the happy couple were tying the knot in Droushia church which only holds about 30 at the best of times so we would have had to have stood around outside and in true Cypriot fashions the timings were loose to say the least!


We pitched up at the reception which was being held at Evgenious Hills with Di and Rob about 8.15pm before the wedding party arrived to stand in line receiving the guests.  Fortunately we timed it right passing through and onto the food queue fairly quickly.  You know when you have been in Cyprus too long when you accept cold plates and lukewarm food as the norm and actually enjoy it!  We did, however, give the vast vats of glutinous Resi a wide birth - Rob, who is normally game for most things even baulked at that.  Resi looks like wallpaper paste and smells like it - the locals go absolutely mad for it as it reminds them of their past which just underlines how poor their diets must have been!


It was actually quite a nice evening and we saw and were seen by many of the locals from our village which is not a bad thing as we try hard to integrate but our plans to slip away were thwarted by Marianna who headed us off at the past and insisted we stayed to watch the newly weds cut their cake and have their first dance.  We duly obliged as really a few more minutes wasn't going to make any difference at this point and we stood by the exit chatting with Rob and Di's friends from the Stephanos.


We managed to get away shortly after the cake cutting and negotiated our way out of the carpark where I was gobsmacked to encounter a sky filled with Chinese lanterns.  I thought these were banned over here because of the danger of them causing a fire and in view of the fact that we have had several days of fire fighting happening locally you really would have thought they might have had a little more sense - I know that all around the approaches to Evgenious Hills is a dust bowl but in the wind who knows where these things might end up?


A nice evening was rounded off with a coffee and a nightcap Chez Veasey - the evening was cool and damp - looks like the horrendously hot nights of a week or so ago are a thing of the past - that's good news as we should start sleeping a bit better.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.