I’ve been to many Uzbek weddings, but had not been invited before to any Tajik weddings. This weekend I finally got an invite to a Tajik wedding and, best of all, I was invited by the Best-Man so I got to see all the action right up front from beginning to end. Central Asian weddings are a big affair. Parents save up for it a very long time and the prestige of the family rests on how great of a wedding they can put on. Most weddings have several days of ceremonies besides just the wedding ceremony and I was able to see a few.
I arrived Thursday afternoon, the day before the wedding. The engagement ceremony where the couple officially says they will marry was the night before and I missed that, but I arrived right in the middle of preparations for the day of the wedding. Once we arrived they sent us out to the bazaar to get some things then to deliver some things to the reception hall. Then back to the bazaar, then out to a shop… Basically last minute preparations.
We were still running around at 10:30pm when someone suggested we cool off by going for a swim. We headed outside of town a few miles where there were three man made lakes by the river. It was the best way to end the busy day: full moon, stars, and a nice cool lake.
The first thing that happened the day of the wedding is called Oshi-Nahor. What happens there is that the father invites all of his male relatives, acquaintances, coworkers, etc…to eat Osh at 5-7 in the morning. It is usually a big affair with a few hundred men attending. There isn’t anything too special about oshi nahor. There are musicians that play clam, somber traditional music. Men come and sit and eat osh and then take off to work or to whatever they must do fro the day. The most interesting thing is that you are also not supposed to stay long at oshi nahor, just come, eat and take off.
After cleaning up the oshi- nahor it was time to go to the brides house to take her for the wedding. Its not a simple affair, it involves gathering several male friends and relatives into a caravan and you head out to the bride’s home. One interesting twist here is that if the bride is from a village the local village boys make road blocks and then charge the groom’s family money to pass to pay for the fact that they are taking a girl from their village. This time there were different groups of local boys who made four different road blocks so it took quite a while because you have this whole production of getting out of the car and bargaining, etc…
Once we arrived to the bride’s house we were ushered into a room and given lunch. But, we arrived with musicians and the a few relatives are supposed to dance in front of the groom on his way to the room so we got out of the car danced a bit and then went into the room. They fed us a three course meal and then we loaded up the dowry and headed out back to the groom’s house.
In the afternoon the bride had all sorts of things to do at the house. They invited me down to take pictures of one ceremony where se put her hands in flour and then had oil poured over it to make flour. Some older woman said prayers while they did it. But I think there were several small traditions like that they did. The groom, best man, and I all took a nap in the neighbors house while this was going on.
The last event of the day was the reception. They had it at a great restaurant. It was really nice. On the way we stopped at a famous statue of a ancient king. The tradition is that the couple should put flowers in front of the statue. Then the reception went on pretty much as ours do. The bride, groom, best-man, maid of honor sit at a head table while the rest of the family eats a good meal followed by dancing.
The day after the wedding a group of the groom friends went swimming again at the lake we went to before. It was a great chance to rest after all the craziness of putting on a wedding. Then after an afternoon of swimming I was off back on my way to Dushanbe.
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