Their Big Fat Romanian Wedding: Saturday Afternoon

Getting Away in the Getaway Car

After the wedding ceremony was done there were way too many people in a small lobby area congratulating the couple. Joel, Helena, Ashlynn and I decided to take the CTS (that was the car Joel was driving around) to the reception.

We wondered if the couple wanted to travel in a convoy, but we did not have any chance of reaching them through the crowd. We figured with the relaxed feeling of the wedding we could just leave.

We were discussing whether or not Joel needed to get something to eat (he said he was past the point of hunger and because there was food at the reception he would be fine) when Joel got a call from someone in the wedding party asking about his whereabouts. It turned out they did want to travel in a convoy. If we had known…we probably would have left anyway.

Allow Me This Indulgence

Since we were ahead of everyone and had some time to kill we did what every suburban-twenty-something-cool-people do: we went to Starbucks. This is really only not worthy news because Andrew works at not just any Starbucks, but one of the best Starbucks I have ever been to.

I had already been to a couple of Starbucks in Portland by this time and I am sorry to say they didn’t live up to the Andrew Enea Standards. Every time I would order a tall mocha. Every time it was wrong. Once I think they mislabeled it and I ended up with a hazelnut mocha thing. Very disappointing.

This particular Starbucks got it right. This doesn’t seem like a really big thing (you are probably asking yourself “Why is Jed wasting my time with this?”), but at the time it was. Here I was in a city I didn’t know with people I had just met in a culture where I was very much a foreigner. To drink that familiar tall mocha was like having a little bit of heaven shining down on me.

Thank you for humoring me. On with the reception.

The Next Best Thing to a Convoy

We couldn’t travel together in a triumphant demonstration of class that is a Cadillac Convoy so we decided to do the next best thing: take a picture of the wedding party with all the Cadillacs in a row.

This was difficult because everyone arrived at different times. There was the question of how long can we be parked in the fire lane. And other questions like: Where is the camera? Where are the drivers? Everyone is waiting for us, should we just go in? Where is the camera? Do we really have to do this? It is really cold; can we wait inside while you get everyone together? Everyone went inside so can we just park then? Aren’t we missing a car?

The bride and bridesmaids waited in the lobby while the best man tried to get the cars that did park back in the line. In the time it took for the drivers to walk back to their cars, it was decided that the guests had been waiting too long in the reception area for the wedding party’s entrance and were getting hungry.

When the missing drivers arrived with their once-parked cars, the whole venture had been (wisely) abandoned and they arrived just in time to hear that they had to park their cars again and get in line for the grand entrance. I was smiling the whole time.

My Grand Entrance

The wedding party was in a line behind the doors to the dining area. A gentleman I didn’t know would announce over the intercom the names of couples-first, the bridesmaid then the groomsmen-and the doors would open and the couple would walk in to an applauding audience. All of this was, of course, done in Romanian.

When it was time for Ashlynn and me to enter the announcer read her name than paused,then gave an awkward “…uh…Yedida.” I could not help but appreciate the irony having my name butchered in a room full of people with names I couldn’t pronounce. From that point on the bride referred to me as Yedididah.

I later learned that he actually pronounced it correctly in Romanian.

I also learned that he mispronounced the name of the Romanian groomsman in front of me.

Time to Eat You Girl

The reception was held at the Embassy Suites in a large conference-like room with seating for just under 500 people. All but three tables were taken. The food (mostly Italian provided by the hotel with a couple of Romanian dishes) was served buffet style in the large hallways outside of the dining area.

One of the groomsmen was (and still is) named Utu (pronounced ootsoo). He was one of the groomsmen/drivers and also the worship coordinator for Agape church who Andrew called when he asked me to play guitar on Sunday.

While in line for the buffet, Utu introduced me to the bridesmaid he walked down with, Denisah. This was Denise who introduced herself to me earlier during the photo shoot. After explaining to Utu that we had already met I began picking on Denise for not introducing me with her real name. She told me that her birth certificate stated, in fact, Denise and that Romanian tradition dictated that female names end in ‘uh.’

I then realized that not only was I dressed in pink, but my name, in Romanian, is a girl’s name. I’m currently seeking counseling for a recently developed gender complex.

Greatest Wedding Tradition Ever

The dining finished and there were some warm words spoken about how wonderful the bride and groom were, who is the real best man, and the meaning of Andrew's word “tsshaw.” At this point I had made two observations: 1. No one brought presents 2. Some of the groomsmen were placing envelopes on the tables.

As I was wandering around looking like I didn’t know what was going on, Andrew asked me if I wanted to be useful. He then handed me a plush white box about the size of a square basketball (use your imagination) with a slit in the top. I was to go around collecting envelopes from each table.

I was happy to do this; however, I feel someone who spoke a bit of Romanian would have been better suited for the mission. I would go around collecting checks (if you hadn’t figured out what was going on that was the clue), and there were a lot of them, then an older gentleman, usually a grandparent, would start talking to me in Romanian.

I would then give him a blank stare.

At some point an older lady, usually his wife would say something to him in Romanian, then the gentleman would ask me in English “Are you Romanian?” This happened about three times at least.

The final installment will be coming soon.