Our first Slovenian Wedding

   Visiting a wedding is always fun, visiting one in another country, or in which the bridal couple are from another culture is especially delightful. This past weekend we made the short trip to Maribor, Slovenia to celebrate the wedding of good friends of ours. Slovenia, while it's population differs from our own, shares a great deal of history with Austria. The northern region of the country was a part of the Austro Hungarian empire at one time before briefly becoming part of the kingdom of the Serbs, Croations and Slovenes. It later fell to the east of the iron curtain under Tito to remerge with its own borders in 1991.

    In many ways Slovenia is a lot like Austria, or at least Styria, The region where I live. And so the differences are all the more fun as they come up unexpectedly. One of the things that probably surprised me the most at the wedding was that the guests line up to congratulate the Bride and Groom and give them their Wedding gifts individually. This was new to me as I am accustomed to the idea of a present table where the gifts are arranged and only looked at by the bridal couple after the reception. The idea of giving them is charming.

 

   The ceremony took place in a castle which specializes in weddings, scheduling one every half an hour or so. We arrived early and saw three different bridal couples, and returning at the correct time, saw another three, one of which was the couple whose wedding we were attending. Things ran very smoothly as it seemed there was a definite schedule that was repeated for each couple. The castle ran like a well oiled machine.

 

 

 

  Once the wedding ceremony was over we moved to a farm about half an hour away for the reception. Slovenians are more serious about their drinks than Austrians which means that where we stick to prosecco they started on shots; grappa produced on the farm. This was followed by a type of jause served as an appetizer as soon as the bride and groom arrived.

 

The farm was able to accomodate all of the guests that night.

 

Dinner was a short time later.

   Just like here, the bride and groom had to do challenges- here they are cutting and raking hay to prove that they can work together.

   During the farm tour we all had to wear straw hats and boots:

   The bridal chamber was the barn with a hay bed- our friends said they slept very well indeed, although that may have been getting to bed at 4 am and then being up again at 8.

 

There were several different types of dancing from disco to belly dancing to a Serbian/ Balkan group.

 

   The cake was cut at midnight- since we have children we went to bed then. The others stayed up until 4.

The next morning we almost missed breakfast as we thought it began at 10 where it actually went from 8 to 10. We got there just in time.

 

And that was the wedding- no sketching for me, unfortunately, but lovely in every other way.

 

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