Wedding Week

On August 9, 2008, Aidas Peg married Kristina Stick-Peg (that's her married name, they weren't cousins-in-law or anything). The wedding included five events that I attended, and anybody who knows Amerikos Lietuviai knows why I was out of the loop that week.

Tuesday night: Planning party for the bachelors party (way to start the week with an all night party so we'd be ready for tomorrows all day party). Moacir and Augis and I started off the night at Užupio Kavinė. We decided to get t-shirts made, make Aidas do funny things, and do lots of full extentions, which was a first for me, but I decided this would be as good at time as any to learn a new way to drink beer. (Honestly, at first I wasn't even sure if they were serious when at the end of each sentence they added "and then we pour beer all over ourselves!")

More people joined our group, and then we moved on to Ed's place and Bruce Lee. After a round of shots of something there, I quietly took my leave for a walk to the new bridge to save a few lits on a cab ride, which is a stupid habit of mine. Why stupid? Well this time, for instance, I witnessed a gypsy roughing up a gipsy girl, and almost got my ass kicked yelling at him to stop (I'd had enough drinks to assume I would not be the victor of that fight, but I had not had too many drink to run away when he came after me). I called the police, but when they arrived the girl denied any mistreatment. I know I didn't imagine it, though, because a bunch of people were watching from their balconies.

Wednesday noon: bachelor party. I was late, maybe an hour, because I had to get the tshirts made on the way. This is the front of all of them. They all had blank backs except for Aido, which had lewd suggestions for what he's probably into on his last night premarriage. The idea was to get his shirt on him without him seeing it. Moacir was certain he could give the shirt to Aidas in a way he wouldn't see it, despite my doubts. Guess how many seconds it took him to see it...zero.

One guess as to whose profile that is!

The full extentions ranged from pilies gatve to the barbakanas, the Old Defensive Wall of Vilnius. We asked many passers-by to photograph us pouring beer all over ourselves, which was amazing!

I gave a speech, under duress, to Aidas at a bar I've never been to and don't remember where it was.

We ate hambergers at Hamburgeriu Pasaulis, on Vokiečių, which were very good, especially after you pour hotsauce all over your wife beater.

After that I took my leave, took a cab home and entertained my special lady and Eglė Lazdauskaitė with my lucid tales of manly antics.

Friday afternoon: I get a call from Aidas. He's in distress: "Dude, we're having trouble getting Rezginelė together; I was hoping, if it's possible, that you could come by at seven o'clock and help us work through it." Of course I can, no problem, and on top of that I'll bring a dvd movie of the dance and I'll even get the instructions written up! (Thanks to my sepcial lady for finding the dvd and my folks for scanning and emailing me the istructions)

We watched the dvd three times, then went out to dance. This was the moment I realized exactly what Aidas meant when he said help us work through it: "please dance it with us." That was the bad news. Then we walked through it three times and called it a night. We were not great, but the guy I was holding juostas with, in particular, was having a very tough time remembering which left is the right left...

Saturday morning: first day of the wedding; first we sped to Gariunai to try to get great wedding presents for the two youths. Unfortunately, we could not find what we were looking for, so after wasting an hour and being a few minutes late for the service, we ended up giving them cash anyway. Well, I think that's best anyway.

It was a nice ceremony with an enthusiastic priest, though we had a bit of trouble understanding the point of his homily. It started out with an interesting bit about how, really, it should be the young couple giving the homily, for various reasons that I found convincing enough; but then he didn't invite them to give the homily afterall. They read nice passages, and there was one tourist walking around in a Waldo shirt, so I got a point for that.

Then everybody went to get his stuff, and since we already had ours, we waited for the limos, which were for the dancers and wedding party (mostely overlap). This was exciting, because we'd never riden in limos. Unfortunately, the limo company screwed us: instead of two limos, each 12 seaters, they sent two limos with 12 seats total. So the dancers who weren't also wedding party got bumped to the bus. Dissappointing at first, but when the bus got going and we remembered how cramped people in the limos looked (still 18 people, I think, in 12 seats), we decided it was for the best! Good times drinking beer on the bus!

The bus/limos took us to an amazing estate, Taujenu Dvaras. It had a huge mansion, ponds and forest and fountains, and plenty of refreshments, and tons of food. The food and drink just kept coming all night, up till maybe 2:30 when my special lady and I went to sleep for good, or maybe till even later.

Sunday 5:30 a.m.: The cock outside started his wake up call for all. Now, that might have been possible to sleep through, if he hadn't woken up the rabid dog, who then barked nonstop for the rest of the morning. He barked so much, during the fitful sleep that followed I dreamt that I threw half a watermellow out the window onto his head, and he finally shut up. But then his master came over and started yelling up at me through the window, so he got the other half right on his noggin! Nice dreams.

At 9:30 began the second half of the wedding, with the band marching through the dorm blowing their horns and beating their drums, knocking on everyone's doors. Of course, nobody was sleeping anymore, at least on our side of the building, so the musicians merely interupted people giving their wives 10-second frenchers.

Breakfast was great, especially the delicious Kibinai! More music, and several ceremonial things, the musicians making people do things, with Lokio Godmother, Gita Kupčinskienė, translating everything into English, and doing some of the things herself in both languages. My favorite was the bit where Kristina gives up a wreath of rūta (rue), symbolizing her youth, and Gita put it in a little treasure box for Aidas, because now her youth is behind her and belongs to him.

The festivities went on hiatus for about a third of the wedding guests at 10:45, including the groom from time to time, with the beginning of the Lithuania-Argentina Opympic basketball game. For the rest of the day, after Lithuania won by four points including a 2.1 seconds to go 3 pointer, all the speaches included a mention of the victory as the second thing we're celebrating today.

Some of the best fun was singing a bunch of folk songs after that. Kristina's father came by several times during the singing, as he had been all day from the moment we walked over from the dorm, to fill shot a shot glass and not leave you until it's gone. Augis did a full extention...with wine!

I got stung by two hornets, on my right ring finger and on my neck. Nobody believed me, because there weren't any marks; the marks showed up the next day, and bothered mefor a week. Word to the wise: watch out for those damn hornets!

Two busses were waiting to take us back to Vilnius. We got on the wrong one if we wanted to go back early...but we got on the right one if we wanted more food and booze. I took over Mr. Stanevičiaus role by walking up and down the bus for 90 mintues pouring everybody drinks. More songs, good times!