Our Armenian Wedding Day

Something I haven't shared much about on this here blog is the fact that we had two weddings. Yep, two. Not really by choice, it just kind of...happened. As I've mentioned, Arsen is Armenian, and his family is very, very proud of their Armenian heritage. They moved here when he was only six years old, so obviously they want to keep their culture alive. And I am all for that, because the more I learn, the more fascinated I am. But it did make for some complicated wedding planning.

Originally we were planning on having one big wedding where we could try to capture the Armenian side of things as well as do all of the fun "American-ized" things I wanted to do. We talked about guest lists, venues, the menu, vodka (a more important aspect than you would imagine), officiants, etc. Everything was kind of up in the air, but we knew there would be A LOT of compromising. To be brutally honest, the last thing a bride really wants on her wedding day is to have to compromise every aspect, but I knew this was important, so I was trying to be understanding.

After what felt like years of looking at venues, we finally found one. It had been my first choice, but we thought it was too small. I ended up deciding that it was exactly what I wanted, so we would just cut the guest list (sorry anyone who didn't get invited, now you know why!). I knew it was super important for Arsen's family that their priest do the ceremony, so that was always the plan. However, after we booked the venue, we found out that he couldn't perform the ceremony unless it took place in a church. Which our venue was not. Sigh.

So basically because of that, and the fact that it is Armenian custom to invite not only your friends, but their children, and their children, and their cousins...we decided two weddings was the only way it would work.

As a stressed-to-the max bride, planning TWO weddings was my ultimate nightmare. Thankfully, thankfully, Arsen's mom and sister planned every single detail of the Armenian wedding. They even bought me a second wedding dress since I wanted the first time Arsen saw me in my actual wedding dress to be at my wedding.

The Armenian wedding took place two weeks before our wedding. I had a lot of friends and family show concern over the Armenian wedding being first, the fact that we wouldn't know which was our true anniversary, and the fact that we would be "married" before our actual wedding. I did have a few reservations, but when it came down to it, none of it mattered. And none of it has been an issue. We consider the American wedding to be our wedding day, September 17th is our anniversary, and we weren't legally married until that day. But September 3rd will always be a very special day to us, and I know to his family as well.

They got to see their baby boy married in the Armenian church, to a girl who had just been baptized in the very same church a week before. (You can't be married in the Armenian church if you've never been baptized, which I hadn't, so we had a ceremony for that as well.) I know in their dreams of this day they never in a million years imagined that he would be marrying a little blonde American woman, but they have come to terms with it and embraced me wholeheartedly.

It was a beautiful ceremony, and the reception was one of the most fun nights of my life. Let me tell you, Armenian people like to party. There were bottles of wine and vodka on every table, more food than you could ever imagine, and a million toasts to our future. There was also dancing....oh my goodness, the dancing. Armenian women dance in a very specific way, and they kept throwing me in the middle and dancing around me in a circle, and I was trying to do this dance that was so awkward and foreign to me...but after a few glasses of champagne I had it down!

My parents and their dates and my uncles who came had so much fun, and will still occasionally bring it up. Arsen's mom said someone told her it was the happiest wedding they had ever been to. She said "Everyone said " Everybody's so happy!". Which was true. We all danced the night away and celebrated the love that Arsen and I have for each other, and these two families that couldn't be more different merging together and becoming a crazy mix of amazing.

Looking back, I'm so incredibly glad that things turned out the way they did. I got the dream wedding I always wanted, and Arsen's family got the wedding of their dreams as well. Arsen's brother was married in Russia after they had moved here, so no one got to go to that one, and his sister and her husband got married in a ceremony at the court house. So this was the blow out wedding they had been waiting for.

It was an amazing day, and it will be such a wonderful thing to share with our children someday. Growing up in a multicultural family will be such a blessing for them I believe. And I'm sure they will love seeing a video of their mom dancing around like a silly white lady in the middle of a bunch of wild and crazy Armenians :)