I Can Almost Hear the Wedding Bells

Posted by Ian Jobe on 10/12/2007

I mentioned in a previous posting that my host sister is about to get married. It still hasn't happened yet but as we get closer and closer, it seems all the talk around here is about the wedding. Very natural response, after all, it's not every day that someone gets married. All the people asking me questions about the wedding though is starting to drive me a little crazy though. It always starts with the same few questions: "When is the wedding? (Oct. 13th); What is Natia's husband like? (Nice but quiet); and finally "When will are you getting married Ian?" (I have no idea). This questions comes is several forms: "Don't you like Georgian girls?"; "How can you not yet be married?"; "Do you want to meet (insert name), a very beautiful girl who I know?" etc. So far though, I've done a good job of deflecting this last question by either saying "I don't know" or just running away when the person isn't looking. It's not a mature response, but it works.

After this though, people are getting more in-depth. Last week, I was having coffee with my two English teaching counterparts when they started asking me some questions I'd never heard before. "Is he friendly? Is he fat? Is he handsome? Is he rich?" etc. Just so you know, outside of my host family, no one else has met him yet. So, I guess I can answer these questions but I'm sure that they would have preferred to ask a female Georgian who had met him, not an American with mediocre language skills. I did my best to honestly answer these questions which are (yes, no, maybe, and I have no idea).

People in my community need to be patient though, everyone will find out what the husband is like in less than two weeks. Very few people attend the actual wedding where vows are exchanged but everyone attends the reception afterwards. More than 200 people are expected to attend the reception which got me thinking, "How much wine is going to be consumed at this wedding?" I only wonder because two weeks ago, my host family was talking about the wedding preparations when my host father chimed in, "We need to buy more wine. We only have 185 liters." So how much wine will be needed for a 215 person wedding? That's the question that's been stuck in my head for days. After all, that's one liter per person. And, when you factor in that some guests will be children or simply won't drink, you easily get at least one liter per person, probably more. My host family's probably just trying to be overly cautious by I'm waiting to see how much wine my host family will need for the big event. I'm betting that they're going to have 300 liters at the start of the party. If you have a guess, you can check back in a few weeks to see if you're right.

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This webpage expresses the views of Ian Jobe. It does not express the views of the United States Peace Corps.

Last updated Sep 29 2008