Turkey Vignette #5: The Finale

The wedding was for a friend from college--this very glamorous friend of mine who used to be a model and who is just the sort of person to have a destination wedding in Bodrum, aka the St. Tropez of Turkey.

Truth be told, by the time of the wedding, I was ready to go home. I was homesick and ready to leave. Looking back now, it's somewhat amusing to me that there was actually some debate in my head about whether to go. Going all the way to Turkey without going to the actual wedding would have been like going to Las Vegas, without gambling or going to Jersey and not shopping. It ain't right.

All in all, there was much buzz about this wedding. And it didn't disappoint. The wedding spanned four days on this seaside resort that made you think the wedding was actually an event to promote the hotel. It was pretty impressive, and much more impressive than the last wedding I went to where the main event was a chocolate fountain. I still remember it. Basically it was this cascading stream of chocolate where the idea was to dip bananas, strawberries, or in my case, cake, coffee, cookies, spoons or anything else that would hold chocolate. Then the most priceless moment happened. The bride came over to our table and started talking with us:

Bride: "So does everyone love the chocolate fountain?"

Table: "Oh yeah, it's great!"

Bride: "Isn't it! (to a married couple at our table) Did you guys have one at your wedding?"

Wife at our table: "Uh, no..." (a little confused.)

Bride: "Oh..." (She walks away from our table.)

Wife: "What the hell was that?"

Back to the Turkey wedding. After three days of drinking, dining and dancing (including some belly dancers who put on a show for us, and who I discovered still wear they're masks even when they're not working), it was time for the show. The wedding ceremony was like out of a movie. It was so amazing that I can't even make any jokes about it. The ceremony took place on a pier that jutted out over the clear blue Aegean Sea. The small string quartet started playing Pachelbel's Canon, and the bride walked down a long set of stairs down a dramatic cliff. As she walked down, I caught a glimpse of the groom who was tearing up. You could cut the mushy feelings with a knife, but it was all so sweet.

I know mostly my blog is filled with wise-cracking comments and silly jokes, but I'm going to depart from that for a bit and take this opportunity, without trying to be too sorry for myself, to say that watching all this made me think a lot about my own life and current status. It wasn't anything earth-shattering or new, and I won't go into it too much for the same reasons that I forced myself not to think about it too much, and instead just think about how happy I was for my friend.

So even after I got back to the US, I was in a bit of a daze, and that also partly explains why I haven't been blogging that much. But now enough distance has passed (and I've finished my US and world tour) to get back to my old self again.