Happy Friday guys. This post was really supposed to go up yesterday but I could not get myself together to edit photos, so its a travel post on Friday this week.
The last time I posted about Romania, it was about our Winter trip. Quick recap: In December we went to five cities and had a visit to Bran Castle. We actually returned to Romania in the Spring (May) for Danny’s cousin wedding (en route to Greece for our Honeymoon). Their wedding was actually on the same day as the Royal wedding.
Although Danny’s cousin is from Bucharest, their wedding was in Poiana, Brasov, a town in the mountains of Romania. The mountainous location paired with the fact that Romania had a pretty bad winter meant that the Spring air was crisp (how I like it – also, we were in the mountains) and perfect for my first Romanian wedding. One of the best weddings/parties I’ve been to in a while.
Anyway, less babbling and more pictures for this post:
Where we stayed:
Danny’s cousin and his wife had their rehearsal dinner and wedding at the Monterai Resort. Its the cutest resort with picturesque villas each with about 4/5 rooms. Danny’s cousin and his wife rented out the majority of these villas for the wedding weekend so their family and friends could be at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding and just in the same place for the entire weekend.
Each family or group got a cottage to themselves so we stayed with the Grooms parents (Danny’s aunt and uncle), Danny’s parents, his brother, his sister-in-law and his nephew in one villa. It was a perfect couple of days.
Rehearsal Dinner:
On the Friday night before the wedding there was a rehearsal dinner for their closest family and friends. It was so fun to meet so many of Danny’s extended family at that dinner and to just see the beginnings of a traditional Romanian wedding.
What a cool experience.
The Wedding:
On the morning of the actual wedding we woke up and had breakfast with the family then watched the Royal Wedding and got ready for the actual wedding of the day.
The wedding was a traditional Christian Orthodox wedding. The first I’ve experience. They got married in the cutest tiniest church (pictured above) in the beautiful mountains of Brasov. As usual the insides of the church took my freaking breath away. As compact as it was, it was stunning! The paintings, the architecture… Europeans do churches well.
The ceremony was in Romanian so I didn’t understand all of it but it was really touching and beautiful even with the language barrier.
The Reception:
The reception was an entire experience. It wasn’t your typical Western reception. Nope it was literally an experience.
I would explain it by saying there was a lot of food, lots of dancing, lots of drinking and lots of fun.
The reception started at about 4pm and never ended until about 3 am. Thats eleven hours folks. Romanian weddings are the best.
As is typical of Romanian weddings (I’ve since learned), there are about 5 full courses of food. Between each course there are traditional dances (some of which we had at our own wedding) and of course regular dances. There was a mix of music as well.
Basically, we all ate a ton and danced it all off. I don’t have any photos of the dancing – I was too busy dancing – but I do have photos of each of the five courses. I couldn’t eat half of it but it was all delicious!
Obligatory photo of Danny and I fooling around before the wedding. I did my makeup, put on a matte no transfer lipstick and gave my Groom a smooch. Of course the lipstick transferred and we thought it was hilarious. He wiped it off about 2 seconds after this photo.
Thats all for today.
I leave on Sunday to start my journey to Romania but I will be back next week with another post from the Spring trip to Romania and the honeymoon to Greece in a couple weeks.
Have a great Friday and weekend guys!!
