Wedding day

While we were teaching English, Victor took Alyona and Nikolai to get married and it did happen, with a only few minor hitches along the way. Victor used our big van, we picked him up on the way into Dnepro to teach and he dropped us off, hoping to be back by two o'clock when we finish teaching, with the bride and groom along to take photos in their "costumes" as everyone calls them and celebrate with a cake with the other teachers.

When he got to Zaporosia, he found out they had an appointment for three o'clock, which we did not know. Luckily, he worked his magic and convinced them to move it up to just after noon if there was a cancellation, considering the bride would be getting tired since they had arrived at ten am. He said the lady even game them a small ceremony, instead of just signing the official paperwork. She told Victor that they do many more divorces than marriages these days.



Victor had convinced them to wait to put on the dress and all for the photos... unfortunately, he discovered a new problem on the way home to the village after the ceremony, when the van got stuck in third gear.

Eventually, Victor drove the old Mercedes into the city, while Garry and I hung out with Clay, fellow teacher, after classes were over until he arrived. We ended up driving the old Mercedes the rest of the week for classes.

 City photos were off with the van out of commission (the transmission was completely rebuilt I think, it came home Saturday afternoon) so we picked up a small cake on the way out of town and ended up having cake and melon with the happy couple and several other students when we got home.

Around 7:30 pm Alyona got into the dress, complete with the veil and Oksana's white boots and Nikolai put on a fancy suit someone had lent him and we did a farm wedding photos session. I even picked three roses from our bush and pulled the thorns off them for her (there were four out there but that would be bad luck, even numbers of flowers are for funerals). 

 Since Nikolai is one of our corn field guards we took some of his guard hut in the field - including carrying her over the threshold.

By the time we were done, Alyona was tired of photo taking, so it's just as well we didn't go all the way into the city to do it, they are unique! On Saturday afternoon I printed a bunch off and put them in an album so they have one just like Oksana and Kolya.