Sunday 13 June 2010

That Polish Wedding


This is my favourite image of our daughter Olivia's marriage to the fine young Tomasz Grabowski in eastern Poland, an hour from Lublin. The musicians came from Warsaw and stayed two days.


So our big fat Polish wedding was the antidote to the heavily orchestrated, anxiety-laden, cosmically expensive affair that we are so used to these days.  The party started with our coach crash, fifteen minutes after I had collected fifty English guests from the airport.  Nobody was hurt or badly shaken and we adjourned to a bar whilst a replacement arrived. Not your usual kind of icebreaker, it has to be said. (That's the hapless Mercedes owner in the apricot shirt. What a gentleman, he never uttered a word of reproof after we comprehensively ruined his day.)




Olivia and Tom live in London but she was insistent they should go to his family for the wedding. They arrived a fortnight beforehand and set it all up then, including obeying the custom of visiting the Polish guests and inviting them in person.   She and I didn't really know what to expect (I arrived three days in advance)  but we went with the flow, with a lot of help from the neighbours.  It was a stunning community effort. I remember calling my husband to say I was up to my elbows in sausage meat and madly chopping onions with the ladies for the world's largest and most delicious Bigos stew.  That was for Day II as it turned out.


The men cut down silver birch saplings from the surrounding plantations and decorated a traditional wooden barn. There was no point interfering and fussing about the mis-en-scene: we'd chosen to do it this way and were delighted that everyone went to so much trouble.  




Well, almost.. Instead of a sea of ruched satin and a groaning table of food Polish style,  Olivia wanted flowers on white damask tablecloths. I already suspected they'd be polyester with a bluish sheen and yes, she wept when she saw them. Then there was a  'matrimonial' with Tom about the soft drinks in plastic bottles going on the tables but that's about the sum of the pre-nuptial panic. That is, if you discount her reading the riot act to the workers who were making free with the wedding  beer out of a nice tap. Naturally there would be vodka - shedloads of the stuff. Champagne was the only thing that came at eye-watering expense but what the hell.


Incidentally, we were to hear a knocking sound when the party started.  Someone was banging in a nail to hang up his jacket. 








The bride and her father got to the church on time in the vintage American sedan, despite the fact it had been pulled over for speeding on its way to collect them.  A large table decoration of artificial flowers and ribbons fixed to the bonnet (the hood?) by a magnet flew off as they turned a corner but my husband fielded it. He had it in his lap for the rest of way.






Couldn't resist this picture. But I am not going to bore you with the whole church thing.
Suffice it to say that we had found a priest the day before who could speak English. I did think that was cutting it a bit fine.  Olivia was four months gone but nobody seemed to mind.








Nobody quite knew who this little old lady was but we were pleased she wanted to join us.










When the newly weds arrived at Tom's parents' little farm, they were greeted with the  bread, salt and vodka symbolic of the sustenance, pleasure and vicissitudes of marriage. Glasses hurled over the shoulder, yes!








A latter-day Botticelli's Rites of Spring?  The time was early May.






After a shy start to the reception, the Brits and the Poles were soon dancing  together (a pair of false teeth flew across the floor which my husband also fielded)  between elaborate food dishes that kept on coming.  At one point my eldest son exclaimed 'Ah, I see this is the fish and gateau course!'  Later, an international football match..









There's the goalie, a young doctor friend of ours, in his morning suit.  





Delightful Polish relatives and friends




A pair of our guests about to leave in this, adding a touch of the surreal.  That wheatfield had never seen such excitement one way and another.






As night fell, the hog roast arrived in a white van:



No modish cuisine here. Love the banana tusks.




The whole experience was riotously funny, riotously drunken, but I write all this with great affection. We weren't expecting sophistication and got what we really wanted, an authentic gregarious and massively enjoyable rural Polish wedding.




The End



























30 comments:

  1. Thank you for this lovely and loving wedding celebration story. I, too, am appalled by the "wedding industry" and always enjoy when a couple makes their wedding their own. I think this story would make a wonderfully funny and heartbreakingly sincere wedding movie. Wishing the couple all the best.

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  2. I make it a point never to go to weddings, but I would have paid money to have gone to this one.Two minutes at this wedding would have been more fun than a year's worth of the overly orchestrated, color co-ordinated snore-fests we have in the US.

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  3. Home you always say just the right things! Thank you.

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  4. Betsy, you would have been most welcome. Love what you said.

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  5. Never had one of my own- yet - so I might just ask you and your daughter to arrange it when I do. Lovely, Rose, and such fun. You made my day!

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  6. Blue, it would be a pleasure!

    E R R A TA: I think that should have been Botticelli's 'Primavera'. What was I thinking? And should that be an American convertible, not a sedan? I just love the word sedan.

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  7. Gorgeous. There's an Aleksander Hemon story about a family reunion in Bosnia this puts me in mind of. I suppose this was (fortunately) too far west for anyone to be breaking out any slivovitz.
    Stunningly beautiful couple.

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  8. Ah rurritable, that's nice. Perhaps I should seek out that story. There was something very powerful to be dispensed by a Burger King style plunger on what has to have been, I'm sorry, the worst wedding cakey confection ever. The British went along withe spirit of things and regretted it.

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  9. Rosie, It is ALL just Right- the last photograph is my fav-the bride is gorgeous and the groom is absolutely over the moon in love-that look at his bride. Storm was actually in attendance, no one should have missed this, has all the elements of wedded bliss! If ever ever ever I get hitched I am hiring the WEST GRABOWSKI INTERNATIONAL WEDDINGS group.
    (oh yes, love the blue madonna in the front pew, the maidens-Botticelli, and the evident joy of the Elders too. A Romp of the First Order. pgt

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  10. la - you put it as ever even better than I could. The blue madonna! Wunderbar.

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  11. Marrying your child off is even more exciting than getting married yourself. And she looked wonderful! What a memorable event, as well.

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  12. HBD pointed the way to this delightful post...knowing our daughter is to be married in October. I know we can't pull off a hog roast with banana tusks, but if we can achieve a fraction of the cheer and good will, I will be thrilled. A wonderful memory to cherish forever! Thanks for the smiles and chuckles!

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  13. I'm glad I asked.

    Sounds like a hoot, and much less grim than some affairs I've attended, (and no doubt you too). In most cases what weddings have turned into is totally bizarre, and I think your daughter was absolutely right to choose what she did. So much more meaningful, which is surely what it's all about.

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  14. Hels, smilla and columnist - well, it's not every bride's cup of tea and I wouldn't want to force something so chaotic on their big day. But so glad you liked the idea of it.

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  15. She is very nice...with the nautral flowers in her hair.....¡¡¡¡ Bellísima¡¡¡¡¡¡ beautiful day...¡¡¡¡¡¡ Berta

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  16. Berta - how kind of you! Thank you.

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  17. Loved it. The very antithesis of the horrid wedding industry as HBD calls it.
    And by the time we got to the hog roast we were on another planet.
    Brava.

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  18. what a wonderful wedding and party! key on 'party'. So many weddings anymore are dull affairs that cost too much money and lack any sense of fun and aren't even elegeant to boot (which I suppose they are striving for?).

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  19. Wedding looks fantasic. We have no fewer than 11 (yes, 11) this summer - of which my far the most exciting has been and gone - it was in Serbia and was wonderful. What splendid photos - thanks for sharing

    Hannah

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  20. Mr Worthington and AD thank you for validating our crazy wedding. And just thank your lucky stars you haven't got eleven to attend like Hannah Stoneham. But Serbia sounds just the ticket.

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  21. Marvelous, said the country boy, absolutely marvelous---as one who's been to them all, from the fanciest society weddings (or wannabe society weddings) to marvelous down home weddings in the county, I am here to agree that one like your daughter's is the best. What fun! Good stuff your family.

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  22. The D E D - I am amazed that everyone appreciates the lack of polish! Ha, just thought of that. Thank you for a delightful comment.

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  23. Back again. Truly, real style is about substance and breaking the rules, not how many Constance Spry arrangements can be stuffed in one church. ("Elegance is refusal", "less is more", "consult the genius of the place", all that)

    What I forgot to mention is what a pang of nostalgia that lovely shot of your daughter and son-in-law driving off in the big white convertible caused me. I bought just such a convertible, 1968, in Miami years ago, and still regret my decision to part with it. *sigh*

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  24. Elegance is refusal. I'll remember that and always to consult the genius of the place. Tom's parents' farm had that all right.. once you got beyond their little concrete house. The hamlet was virtually a clearing in a silver birch forest and being near the borders of Ukraine and Belarusse, I think it could almost qualify for Dr Zhivago country - or my image of it anyway.

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  25. 'Ah, I see this is the fish and gateau course!'

    One of the best lines in English literature! Rose, brilliant, darling, just brilliant!

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  26. Dearest Blue, you always go straight to the heart of my posts and seem to notice things other people miss. I love that. I have to boast that my son Will is quite a wag.

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  27. Maritime observer29 June 2010 at 11:59

    R-C-L-V! From a state of quiet your blog has re-emerged with new and strong shoots. This entry on Olivia and Tomasz's wedding is most entertaining and enjoyable. It seems remarkably courageous of her to have chosen to hold the ceremony in Poland - was there any one particular element (or factor) that prompted her to do so?

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  28. Maritime observer, thank you! Why have we not met before? Nobody felt it was particularly courageous to have the wedding in Poland but it did seem very romantic to have a rustic one in what seemed to be Dr Zhivago country almost. Our family were more able to travel than Tom's and we were lucky that over 50 Brits thought it worthwhile to go all that way. (We're talking close to the Ukraine border.) Naturally Poland then, it was 4 years ago, was deliciously cheap too except for the champagne!

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  29. Such good cheer! And joie de vivre! I am sending this to my dearest daughter, who loves to pore over wedding magazines. Just to show her what a little less organisation and more 'go with the flow' can create. Thankyou so much for sharing.

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  30. MOE, I am sorry I didn't find your comment before - somehow it slipped through the net.

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