I Do

Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.

Where we are: We’re in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, going to the (very affordable) ballet as often as possible, and doing a bunch of necessary computer tasks that require a great deal of tedium.

I Do

Earlier this month [Aside: it was on Labor Day, which was only 3.5 weeks ago as I write this, but it feels like ages ago—such is the time-bending nature of three-countries-plus-a-roadtrip-in-3-weeks].

I digress. As I was saying, earlier this month, when we were departing the US, we had a long layover at Dulles Airport, which got even longer when our flight to Istanbul was delayed by an hour. It wasn’t a crisis for us (I mean, relatively speaking, nothing ever is for us—we can be here, or we can be there—it’ll be fine either way).

But we do very much love the business class lounge at the Istanbul airport. No, really—I consider it my home-away-from-the-home-I-don’t-have. It is literally one of my favorite places on the planet. Lee thinks I’m overly enthusiastic, but he is mistaken. An endless supply of divine Turkish baklava? I totally blame Turkish baklava for my wee little blood sugar problem, but we’ll just skip right over that, shall we?

The flight delay was eating into my already-short Istanbul layover, aka baklava time, so when I saw on the board that there was an earlier departure for Istanbul, I lobbied hard to go down to the gate and see if we could sweet-talk our way onto it.

We couldn’t. Between staff rotation and annoying bureaucratic rules, we were brushed off, which was no biggie. And we weren’t the only ones. There were at least two other passengers trying to do the same thing we were doing, so we struck up conversations with both.

One was—and this is actually the thing I wanted to tell you about—a young bride-to-be, on her way to her wedding. I was so excited for her! She and her husband were booked through Istanbul on their way to the Dolomites, in northern Italy, to get married two days later. They were terribly worried about missing their connection, which made me feel bad for trying to weasel my way onto the earlier flight for something so insignificant as baklava.

We congratulated her, and gushed over how exciting it must be to be getting married in such a gorgeous location, and reassured her that they’d probably make their connection just fine, and then I made a comment about how worried they must be about the guests—were a lot of people flying in?

No. No one was joining them; they were going to have a second celebration a few weeks later, in the US, for guests.

The wedding in the Dolomites was just the couple, and a photographer. There wasn’t even going to be an officiant.

Now, I realize weddings have changed since I got married umpteen years ago. I realize it’s all about the moody atmospheric photos that trumpet the happy couple’s gorgeous aesthetic to the world.

But somehow, I feel like we’ve kind of lost the plot if the whole point of a wedding is to go to a far-away place that neither partner has a connection to (they didn’t—I asked) and get photographed having a meaningful moment that, as far as I could tell, didn’t really have much meaning beyond the photos. I mean, is it even technically a wedding if there’s no one there to perform the ceremony? Isn’t it just … a photo shoot?

I sort of thought a wedding was meant to say, this is us, joining our two lives and committing to making something new together. I didn’t realize it was this is us, having a glamorous vacation in a random place we thought would look good in the photos, while wearing fancy clothes. Isn’t that the honeymoon? I’m not knocking honeymoons—ours was fantastic—but I’ve never confused my wedding and my honeymoon. Also, I didn’t take my wedding dress along on my honeymoon (instead I got a whole suitcase full of cute new outfits for the honeymoon, which was dumb, because I spent the whole week in a bathing suit).

It was an interesting glimpse into American culture nowadays, and as much as anything else during our two weeks in the US, it made me feel a bit out of touch, and ever so old.

We see brides and wedding photos being taken all the time, all over the world. Just about every country has some kind of iconic, beautiful view where the bride and groom want their photos taken. We’ve seen entire wedding parties exiting a historic church to a fanfare of congratulations. We’ve seen all the guests arriving at our hotel for the party. We’ve seen a parade of cars, bride and groom in the first one, noisily wending through town in a cacophony of joy and horns. Once we were even invited to a wedding by some of the bride’s family (in India, so unsurprising).

But that young woman at the Turkish air counter at Dulles was a first for me—a bride for whom the only apparent purpose of the ‘wedding’ was the photos.

Now get off my lawn, all you young whippersnappers.

Take care,

Lisa

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