The Ukrainian Wedding: Pre-wedding
The Ukrainian Wedding... where do I start. I was fortunate enough to participate as a first cousin in law in a Ukrainian wedding recently. Regardless, I initially thought of summarizing similarities and differences between weddings I've attended but I felt I would not do the Ukrainians justice without writing about the wedding I attended. I don't even know where to start but let me assure you that dancing and dancing and dancing, traditions and horilka (vodka) were definitely overflowing. As I gather my thoughts, it hopefully makes most sense to express it in chronological order. On the day of the wedding, I arrived with my wife and my little one at the groom's parents house at 10am. To my surprise, I saw two wedding cakes in the kitchen. Now, I thought I knew about the Korovai bread (wedding cake) tradition but it will later blow my mind away. As usual, a Ukrainian host - my uncle in law in this case, was very very generous in offering us sumptuous amount of food an...