Keeping on the lines of my previous post of it being Wedding season, I officially attended my first Slovenian wedding this weekend (No, I din't crash!). I LOVE weddings! Everything about them! Dressing up, the decoration, the champagne, the cake, the dancing, the 'aww' moments...and especially when your sharing these beautiful moments with people who are special to you! 

Weddings have only recently started becoming more popular in Slovenia. A majority of them prefer to save that money or invest it on a house and live with partners and have children. While this would be a taboo situation in India, it is quite socially accepted here. Moreover Slovenian weddings are quite small (upto a 100 hundred people) with only very close family and friends being invited. And so I was quite excited about being invited to one! Apart from being a cultural experience, it was also a more personal experience for me as it was the wedding of a work colleague and his girlfriend, two of  my best friends in Slovenia and an amazing couple! It was a beautiful sunny day, although a tad bit too hot 

( summer is finally here!). I was even worried to sit down in case I would have a big wet sweat patch on my derriere!

The wedding was held in a village where the bride is from, called Ozeljan, in the Primorska region of Slovenia, quite close to the Italian border. Since I was technically a guest from the groom's side, it usually is tradition to meet at the groom's house the morning of the wedding. However, since where he comes from is a 2 hour drive from Ljubljana and we would have had to be there at 9 in the morning, we decided to skip that, get some beauty sleep and head to the bride's place a bit later where we would meet the rest of the groom's wedding party. The entry into the bride's house was quite a task! The groom was stopped by some of the men from the bride's side and put under 'serious' examination! They made him play the harmonica, sing some folk song, get kernels off 3 corns in the shortest time, trim the grass with a scythe and then answer a questionnaire about the bride and every wrong answer cost him a 100 Euros!!! Seems like a lot of pressure to get married huh! But he did very well and finally could unlock the house door to see his beautiful bride! As obvious, food and drink flowed after. Oh and music of course. There was a guy playing the harmonica and singing folk songs in such an enthusiastic fervour without a care in the world, apart from making sure his wine glass was nearby for a few sips in between songs! Somehow he seemed quite familiar to me and it took me a long time to figure out that he was the same guy who had played the harmonica at the other pre-wedding party I had been to a few week ago!! What co-incidence! But then I remembered how small Slovenia is and the other party was also in the Primorska region so he must the star in demand around here!

The civil wedding ceremony took place in the nearby castle Kromberk and the church wedding followed at a pretty little local church in a traditional catholic style. Although the whole ceremony was in Slovene, it seemed like the general vows and a few readings from the bible and some hymns by the choir. What I found most interesting and similar to weddings in India, was the custom of throwing rice on the couple after exchanging the vows when they exited the castle and church! And I previously thought this was specific to Hindu weddings only!

The wedding reception was at a restaurant adjacent to the church. Plenty of eating, drinking and dancing pretty much summed up the evening. A highlight of the reception was a slideshow of pictures of videos of the bride and groom as kids that was put together by their siblings! It was absolutely hilarious, probably a bit embarassing for the couple but entertaining nevertheless! And guess who caught the bride's bouquet! :D This is the second time at two consecutive weddings! Sign or what?! My beau's reaction? : "Who did you bash up to get the bouquet?". LOL! There was a similar tradition for the guys where the groom had to get under the bride's dress (tsk tsk) and take off her garter with his teeth! He then threw it similarly to all the single guys. And you know what that means :)

In this region of Slovenia, friends can get a bit playful...playfully mean! They mess up the room where the newly wed couple are meant to spend the night...trash cans, move the mattress, spill water around...just to annoy the couple so that they can't get straight to bed. My friends did very well to keep the hotel they were staying at a secret so that they wouldn't have to go through this! And they were proud about it until...at the reception they started projecting a video that some of the bride's friends and brother had made about things to do in Tenerife (where they are going on a honeymoon) and at the end of the video found out that the video was shot in their apartment in Ljubljana which they had converted into 'Tenerife' with sand all over the place and beach stuff! Was an epic moment of realisation! I have to  say kudos to the efforts the friends had put in, especially with the video! Was awesome! You can check out the video on YouTube.

The band followed...I really enjoyed their music, they did a lot of covers...until they started playing songs by Aqua and Vengaboys...but because I was not really sober I din't care much and continued dancing until my heels killed my feet (about 4 am!)! All in all it was a wonderful day! I initially thought that I would not fit in not knowing any Slovenian or other people there but everyone was just so nice and friendly that I did nothing less than thoroughly enjoy myself! I am hoping there will be many more such occassions. Hint hint, to my other Slovenian friends! ;)