My Toothless Indian

A couple of weeks ago, Pascal had his Fasching celebration in class - a whole day of games and fun. That morning, the dressing ritual just took half the time as usual, making me wish it were Fasching every day. Before he left for school Tessa snapped that picture of us. If anybody ever wondered, why it is sometimes hard to say "No" to Pascal: It's that big, fat smile on his face.

A Czech Wedding

The musicians are arriving

Dean at the big fat Czech wedding

Mira in a harness pushes Klara in a wheelbarrow

Chained for life - in a good way

Feeding each other the first meal as a married couple

Picture wall of Klara's and Mira's adventures

Pascal had a blast - after his cake was saved

Ani was one of the flower girls

Handsome Agro got a lot of attention

So this is something I meant to do for such a long time: Write a post about Klara’s and Mira’s wedding. Just last week I went through dozens of pictures that our friend Ania had been taking and was again reminded of my tardiness.

Last year in late July we drove to Stramberk, a little town in Moravia to celebrate Klara’s and Mira’s wedding. For our weekend stay, Klara had rented a gorgeous timbered house in regional folk style near the town’s main square. The interior was traditionally furnished with handpainted wooden furniture.

Klara and Mira are both nature people, enjoying adventures, the outdoors and growing and making their own food (The latest favorite is the self-made carrot juice!!). So it is not surprising, that for their wedding the two picked a place under the open skies: a wide flowery meadow for the ceremony and a garden area for the party. Also not surprising was Klara’s choice of wedding dress: A light green gown that matched her naturally red hair beautifully. The entire celebration had been organized and was run by friends: table settings, decorations, food serving, tombola etc. which gave the party a somewhat improvised but all the more unique and pleasantly informal character.

For the actual ceremony, everyone gathered in the meadow. Mira had to take Klara’s shoes off as the bride is supposed to step in front of the priest showing her pureness. The bride’s shoe was later circled around among the guests for money gifts. Following the congratulations, the groom gave the bride a ride in a wheelbarrow –slave-like in a harness. In turn, he then got to symbolically put a chain on her foot to keep her tied to himself for the years to come. For their wedding meal, the freshly married couple spooned soup in each other’s mouths, fortunately protected by an over-dimensionally big bib.

A funny little incident happened after the wedding cake was cut by the newlyweds. Little Pascal had gotten hold of an extra-large piece of cake that was dangerously balanced on his plate. Somehow, Agro – Klara’s dog - caught attention of this yummy treat moving on two short legs and started following Pascal around. Pascal fearing for his cake moved faster… and faster… and faster- getting a little panicky. Now the chase was on and Agro was right at Pascal’s heels! As if to emphasize the comedy of the situation, the band was playing a cheerful, fast-beat, Czech song and the whole scene just seemed like a movie script. But in the end Pascal and the cake were saved.

We spent the whole day meeting people, dancing, eating too many cookies (several kilograms were baked for the wedding by the families of the couple) and listening to the Czech band playing something that sounded very similar to klezmer music. Thankfully, we did not understand the Czech lyrics, for Klara told us a good portion of the content was lewd jokes, or at the very least misogynistic. Nonetheless the music was great.

The whole wedding was really a wonderful celebration under blue skies in the green heart of nature. Very much a wedding celebration about the persons that Klara and Mira are.