To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge weddings take absolutely yonks to arrange. Mine didn’t, it involved buggering off to the Gulf of Mexico and giggling across a very wide beach and getting marvellously married whilst park rangers drove past in jeeps giving us the thumbs up! But normal weddings, for people with lots of friends and family seem to take an age to organise. Between melt downs over dresses and bridesmaids and venues and the exactly right shade for the flowers I think the average wedding takes a year to organise and probably a few decades to pay for. Muslum’s wedding was organised in four days and with hordes of bridesmaids, hundreds of guests, drummers, singers, flowers and a tanker load of glitter that was no mean feat.

After all the years of stress and worry Muslum’s wedding hopes all came together in a rush and not only did he finally get married but he got married on a particularly auspicious day, 14th February. Not only was it Love Day in Turkey (Valentines Day in the west) but it was Mevlid Kandili, the birthday of the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and a particularly lucky day, so if omens matter this marriage gets a head start.

Every town in Turkey has a government provided wedding salon, normally a huge room with plenty of space for the swaying, stepping, men one side women the other, rings of dancers that are part of traditional weddings here. The wedding salons are low cost, readily accessible, have lots of parking and meet the needs of a society where a quiet intimate wedding is just not ever considered.

When I walked into the wedding salon in Aydin to be confronted by a marching, stamping semi circle of men holding hands and a wall of sound from the PA system that reverberated in my chest I nearly turned and ran! I’m not great with crowds and there must have been 150 men all solemnly moving together, their steps led by a serious looking elder who flicked a red handkerchief in time to the booming base beat. Behind them a smaller semi circle of women moved in the opposite direction, their brightly coloured headscarves just visible between the closed ranks of the male dancers.

Aydin, Muslum’s brother guided us to reserved seats to the left of the PA system and all Muslum’s foreign friends spent a long time mouthing exclamations at each other as the dance progressed and the noise got louder. Over the enthusiastic singing of the traditional wedding songs there was the occasional yip and cry of the women as they danced. The men got more enthusiastic in their prancing, some breaking away to perform individually, cheered on by their comrades, and the flying and weaving patterns of the red scarves grew more frenzied. There was no sign of Muslum or his new wife.

After an hour or so Muslum, the Bride, her ten attendants and Muslum’s family made their entrance. They were ushered in the back door of the wedding salon, the bride with a traditional red lace scarf veiling her and her brightly dressed attendants clustered around her like so many glowing flowers.

Nick, who is tall and hugely confident and has had a self-consciousness bypass muscled his way into the throng of twittering ladies and started taking photographs. Muslum looked shell shocked (which is a universal expression for grooms) and the bride looked very unhappy. Nick tried and failed to make anyone smile!

Brides in weddings like this tend not to be the blushing, excited, happy creatures of western weddings. They are normally heavily made up, tearful, constantly fussed over by female relatives and moved through the process like brightly painted and very unhappy dolls. It isn’t that they are unhappy to be getting married but normally by this point in the three day ceremony they are tired and missing their families and worried about the wedding night and very, very lonely.

The Brides family takes a back seat in Turkish weddings as traditionally they have handed their daughter over into the care of the Groom’s family who now take centre stage. Particularly in arranged marriages the Bride’s family may not even be present. They may live at the opposite end of this very large country and whilst they will be along in a few weeks to inspect the new house and see that everything is okay they often don’t attend the actual ceremony. So we have a young woman who has probably never left her village before packed off on a bus with a bloke she has only met once to a new home in a very different part of the country and a new family she hasn’t met. It’s no wonder that by the time she is poured into the wedding dress and made up and coiffed to distraction that she looks like she is going to her funeral rather than her wedding.

As the men in attendance ignored the bride and continued with their rhythmic, hypnotic dance the ladies clustered around her, touching her hair, touching her veil, craning their necks to assess her dress and the bridesmaid’s dresses and (probably) her child bearing ability! They were excited and happy, welcoming a new friend into their society and extended family. The bride looked like she wanted to throw up, but so would I with so many people looking at me.

Having rested for a while and been inspected by all and sundry Muslum and his new wife then made a stately circuit of the room, hand kissing respected elders and meeting more people than they could possibly remember. Whilst they processed the drummer arrived and small children clustered excitedly around him. Muslum and the bride were then taken into the women’s dancing line and the dance was on again. Muslum’s sisters, unrecognisable with their medusa curled hair and glamorous dresses encouraged me into the circle but I begged off claiming I’d fall off my 5inch heels, which was no lie.

We had expected that the actual marriage ceremony would now take place but apparently the local hoja was having a busy night and so had popped round to Muslum’s house and actually married them earlier.

Several hours into the evening and after the processing came the all important pinning on of the money. The bride normally cheers up a bit at this point and you get to exchange a few words with the traumatised couple as you pin notes to the long scarves they wear. I managed to congratulate Muslum and give the bride an encouraging smile before they were lost in a crowd of currency and hands.

We took the pinning on of money as our cue to leave. The hall was heaving with people, crowded and hot, and David was having trouble avoiding being dragged in to the men’s dance!

As we slipped quietly from the salon and made our way to the cars I was amazed how quickly this had all come together in the end, how dresses had been found and fitted in four days, how a band and a singer with serious stamina had been booked and how many people had come. I’d be lucky to drum up a table for ten if I ever got married. It’s a testament to the closeness of Turkish society that everyone comes, and everyone cares and whilst it is a trial for the Bride for everyone else it is a joyous happy occasion where traditions are reinforced and it is something to talk about over the tea glasses for months to come.

A few points to note.

1. Muslum is very happy; his wife is very happy, she loves her new home and is settling in with her new family. She is also very beautiful and smart and has a quiet authority and dignity about her. I think they will work well together and after all that is what marriage is about, working well at life together.
2. It is very difficult to get Turkish people to smile in photographs. Photographs are a serious business, particularly those which commemorate things for posterity, like weddings, so whilst everyone looks very serious and straight faced in the pictures they are actually having a whale of a time!
3. Turkish people love weddings, having heard I had been to Muslum’s wedding my neighbours had to see the photos and go through every one, analysing and commenting and delighting in vicariously experiencing another wedding with true and genuine pleasure.

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