NiCE Day FoR A WhiTE WeddING
October, 2003, Vodkaberg, Russia
English Teacher R arrived here in Vodkaberg in April 2003; by June he had a girlfriend who wouldn’t let him out of her sight; by the beginning of September she was two months pregnant; in October they were married.
I was best man.
My duties as best man began on Friday evening when ETR came to my place after work and I had to try to calm his pre-nuptial jitters. (My sensible advice was: well, try it, you might like it, and if you don’t you can always get divorced, plenty of people do it.)
As typical with Lady Fate these days, she decided to play another hysterical joke on me. A blonde girl who looks like Britney Spears who always lets me grope her but won’t let me take her home, owing probably to the fact she is married, called me a few minutes after ETR and I got in, drunk at a little "girls’ party" she was having. Just girls. They were celebrating her birthday, which was the next day.
She wanted me to come over.
ETR became nearly hysterical when I tried to get away. I had to arrive at 8:30am at his house the next day to begin the wedding ceremony, I couldn’t go out and get fucked up and spend all night banging some ho, I had to be presentable. He begged me not to go and leave him alone. We popped a few beers in my kitchen.
ETR got quite drunk after two beers and two cognacs, owing probably to the fact he’d been too nervous to eat anything for two days, and he started to fall asleep, but he had to wait for his fiance’s brother who was bringing some important wedding stuff. He arrived at 12:30am, and I called the blonde girl and she was on her way home. She expressed her regrets.
I went and jacked off and hit the sack.
I got up the next day at 7:00am, put on my $120 off-the-rack suit I'd just bought, and went over to ETR’s – the snow was falling pretty heavily, the temperature was about 25 or so.
African Student S arrived soon after and we had a few teas and cognacs, and spent about an hour and a half waiting for R’s fiance’s brother to arrive. Traffic being bad because of the snow, he arrive at about 10:00am, the ceremony scheduled to begin at 11:00am.
We had to go to the bride’s apartment for the traditional “buying the bride” ceremony first. ETR had rented two cars for the wedding, paying $200 – a purple BMW, and the “limo” which turned out to be a huge white Lincoln Continental Pimpmobile from the early eighties, with gangster whitewalls and a cracked windshield. I had paid about $50 for decorations for the cars, which seemed to consist of nothing but a few ribbons and some big plastic wedding rings on the top, and of course a few cheap balloons. (I didn't even get to keep them.)
We all piled into the Lincoln Pimpmobile and were about halfway there when we realized ETR had forgotten the bouquet. I had to race back to the apartment with the bride’s brother to get it, aided by his fake police siren.
Now, all of the bride’s friends were waiting outside the bride’s flat, ready to greet us. The Maid of Honor asked all the questions. First I had to put some money on a silver tray as proof that ETR had financial resources enough to be a decent husband. I was supposed to spell out the bride’s name with coins, and bills, actually, but ETR hadn’t bothered to tell me that I was supposed to bring any coins.
Then there was a series of trivia questions about the bride, like “What school did she go to” and “How long are her legs?” ETR did surprisingly well at this, actually. Then they showed a piece of paper with a lot of lip-prints on it and ETR was supposed to guess which one was the bride’s, if indeed any of them were. After one wrong guess, he correctly guessed that none of them were. This all happened in the filthy stairwell to the bride’s apartment.
Then he had to sing a song with the word “love” in it; he blanked out on any, so I suggested he sing “I Will Always Love You” from the Bodyguard. He managed a few bars, and we proceeded up the steps.
The next ceremony was pretty unpleasant – we were supposed to retrieve a key from the bottom of a huge jar of fruit juice to open the first door to the bride’s apartment. We couldn’t reach in, though, we had to drink all the fruit juice and get the key with our teeth. African Student S and I already had to pee from all the cognac and tea we’d had to drink, so drinking 5 liters of fruit juice wasn’t a very easy task, but between ETR and African Student S and I and a couple of the bride’s male friends, we managed it.
Then there were three paper hearts with the ends of keys sticking out of them – ETR had to choose one to open the door. He bunged that one up, choosing the correct key on the third try, so I had to pay more money.
The last thing was in the bride’s front foyer – three boxes on the ground, one of which contained the bride’s wedding shoes. He had to choose the correct one, but only managed it on the second try.
I was told later that I spent about 800 rubles, about $27, which the bride’s friend used to get drunk.
So then we all went to the “wedding hall”. The ceremony was supposed to start at 11:00, but it was about 11:20 by the time we arrived. No big deal though, because they were way behind schedule and three wedding parties were piled up waiting in the foyer. There was some problem with the documentation, too.
We all stood around bored for about an hour until the ceremony finally got under way. The wedding hall was pretty far from churchlike, just a big mirrored room full of flowers and ribbons with a guy sitting playing a Casio keyboard and a matronly woman at a desk. She made a speech in Russian and the bride and ETR went up to the desk and signed the official wedding documents. Then they exchanged rings, and said “Da” and kissed, and boom, they were married.
Afterwards there was a brief stop in a room downstairs for champagne and chocolate. I was supposed to make a toast, but for some reason couldn’t think of anything to say other than “God’s mercy on you fools!” so I just said, “Happiness forever.”
We all went out to a few locations around Vodkaberg – plazas overlooking the river -- for photo ops, and some sandwiches and cognac and tea and champagne were passed around, which perked me and African Student S up considerably – we were starving, a little woozy with high blood sugar from all the tea, fruit juice, and cognac we’d drunk.
We went back to the bride’s for vodka and more food – including such delicacies as gnu and jellied meat fat. Gnu is very good actually, though I think it was spiced in the preparation somehow, making it taste like a richer version of pepperoni. As the alcohol flowed, the foreigner/Russian teenage girl dynamic kicked in and we found ourselves the center of attention of a lot of cute girls.
ETR took us aside and begged us not to get stinking drunk and start pawing the bride's friends, to try and behave for once in our lives. We disappointedly agreed, but we had to agree the potential for unpleasantness of some sort was pretty high, what with all the relatives and boyfriends around, and we should try to keep it light.
They’d rented out a café for the evening, and about 50 of the bride’s friends and relatives and our school’s staff all headed to the café at five. There was of course a tremendous amount of food and vodka and wine and champagne, so we dug in. I was sitting at the main table with the bride and ETR, the Maid of Honor on one side of me – a girl I had some history with and liked quite a lot – and the bride’s dad on the other. He and I had some meaningful vodka drinking, but I kept a check on myself, drinking lots of water and juice and eating a lot, too. ETR kept worriedly approaching African Student S and I to see how drunk we were.
There was dancing, a lot of drinking, and general mingling, and then the bridesmaid and I were supposed to give special toasts to the bride and groom. I had written a lovely toast waxing poetic about the warm and hospitable Russian people and the beautiful city we lived in. However, as I began to make the toast, Chaos popped up again – it was English Teacher E, a 25-year-old Welsh girl, who nobody had been paying much attention to. She’d been chugging vodka like it was going out of style with some Russian guys, and she stood up during the toast and began screeching “SHUT UP AND DRINK!” every time I tried to speak.
People were trying to shush her, but she continued this throughout the toast. Some people tried to escort her out, and she fell down and refused to get up. English Teacher M and the two co-owners of our school tried to drag her out to the car, but she fought them like a demon, insisting she was going back in. Apparently she scratched one of the co-owners on the neck badly and he was bleeding.
Surprisingly they didn’t just kick the crap out of her, as I probably would have done, but got her into the car and locked her in her apartment, where she spent the night lying on the floor in a puddle of her own vomit.
Meanwhile, back at the wedding, the party was approaching its midnight climax, with a lot of dancing going on, various teenage girls fluttering into and out of my arms. The bride's middle-aged family members were shaking it with just as much energy as the younger people there, fueled by plenty of alcohol. Ah Russia.
Finally the Maid of Honor, African Student S and I decided to go to my house so I could change out of my suit prior to going to the Degenerate Bar. African Student S promptly collapsed on the bed and passed out. The bridesmaid and I went into the kitchen and made out on the counter.
The bride had mentioned it was good luck for the best man and the maid of honor to have sex on the wedding night.
The door bell rang, however, as some more guests arrived to go to the bar with us.
I’m hoping making out with the Maid of Honor on the wedding night provided the bride and groom with some percentage of good luck, in any event.
I think we'll all need it.