my small (thin?) Turkish wedding

My new home, being neighbors with Greece and having shared a long history, mixing of people & cultures, and many years of conflict and controversy over who invented whatever first, does share the custom of having huge weddings. Turkish weddings, the average size of which, just contemplating it, makes me enochlophobic. A few things enochlophobics fear will happen when around large crowds are: 1. being trampled to death 2. contracting a deadly virus 3. getting lost in a massive crowd of people 4. they themselves feel small and insignificant when surrounded by so many people. one of my "is arkadaslarim" (work friends) told me that she had 1000 people at her wedding. how can you even greet that many people in one day?

So our Istanbul wedding was tentatively planned for July. and my husband had done some research on places, all of which were prohibitively expensive. and as i have learned, since i have been here, things happen much more slowly here than where i am from. there is a natural evolution and sequence of events that need to occur before something can be accomplished. no prioritizing, skipping ahead, multi-tasking, internet research, calling ahead or time saving steps will make things happen any faster no matter how hard you try to push things along. So soon, July turned into August and then things fell by the wayside, and then the idea of not having a wedding at all entered the picture.

To be honest, I wasn't adamant about having a wedding, even though i had gone through the expense of having a dress made. and my husband's position was that since we would have to foot the bill, he didn't feel it was so important. So after resigning ourselves to not having one after all right before seker bayram, i noticed that his mother seemed sad having to explain our decision to the rest of his extended family, as i could imagine, since he was her eldest and only son. and it made me think that it would be sad for us and for our children to not have some small celebration. so my proposal, was if we could limit the guest list to the absolute minimum, we could afford it. the concept of coming up with the guest list in order to estimate the cost, was a bit of a new concept for everyone involved (hmmm) but to my husband's surprise, it only tallied to 100. so in true Turkish fashion, the wedding was on again, and we were able to find a place, add an overlay to my dress, find a hairdresser, have invitations printed & delivered all in 3 short weeks. a world record i am sure.

But things did not run smoothly, remember where i am. after getting a wide range of quotes to have an overskirt of organza (polyester) added to my dress, i finally decided on a shop in Bakirkoy, near our apt, not being able to stomach another trip to Fatih, which is the wedding dress district, and big business here. we decided somewhat spontaneously to go to a place recommended by a work friend, on independence day, so we took public transportation, the dreaded otobus, which i have never taken alone, not knowing the routes, nor possessing the communication skills to determine where i should get off, and have heard horror stories about how it takes forever, stopping everywhere, and going all over istanbul before taking you to your desired destination. not the most efficient forms of transportation here. but my husband refused to take his car, so we were forced to take a bus with my poor wedding dress stuffed into a shopping bag. trying to avert getting lost, i begged my husband to call the shop to find out its location in Fatih. he did, but somehow did not know its exact location, and where we got off the otobus ended up being quite far from the shop, so we had to fight our way through crowds, asking every few blocks for the landmark the woman at the shop gave us, a Roma ice cream parlor.
Now Turkish people are helpful to a fault. which means that they will give you directions even if they have no idea where you want to go. so be careful when asking directions because you could be sent very far in the wrong direction before you realize the error.
The shop was called Mimosa and the "tailor" was crude and manhandled my dress to the point where my husband noticed, and told me when she left the room, that she would ruin my dress. her granddaughter also was so intent on watching me undress, that after i insisted on being alone in the dressing room, she had to be physically carried away kicking and screaming. if she was minding her own little business, i wouldn't have minded her being there, but she had her eyes riveted to my naked body in a preternaturally creepy way, and so i had to draw the line. what a weirdo!
so we rushed out, relieved, but still undecided about where to have the simple addition made to my dress, which i could have done myself if i had the time or resources. so we decided to go back to the first place we randomly selected from one of the streets leading off the meydan (square) in our town. but we had forgotten to get their business card, and most businesses do not have listings on the internet or online yellow pages, in fact, they didn't even have their phone number listed in their 2nd floor window, which i found out after strolling over there a couple of times after work. so, being desperate, feeling the date approaching, i went to their door, rang the neighbors' bells and snuck in past the old busybody who lives on the 1st floor. I left a note on their door, as the busybody kept calling up to me in Turkish "who are you". i pretended i didn't understand and continued to write my note, as the light kept shutting off. i hastily stuffed it in the doorjamb, but the old lady must have removed it because they never received it and i ended up having to go back on a sat morning to get their number.
so i finally had my dress finalized, and decided to have my hair and makeup done at a nearby kuafor (hairdresser). they all do bridal packages, which include your hair, make-up and manicure/pedicure, and are also a huge rip off considering they charge 250-300 YTL and ala carte they only total about 70 YTL. I insisted on a hair test, and brought photos and my husband to translate. he seemed to understand, and from my experience with seeing the hairstyles of most Turkish women, I was prepared with a photo of fake, hard curly hair that is highly favored here (i have no idea why) and then the one that i wanted - soft, natural, loose waves.
i was instructed to come the day before to have my manicure & pedicure, so everything seemed fine, and we turned out attention to finalizing our wedding place. my husband and I had gone looking one day, and only went to one place. it was a small 2nd floor restaurant in Kurucesme, with a nice patio and view of the Bosphorus. it seemed nice and the price was close to what we wanted to spend but my husband wanted something closer to his mother's family. but we had no other leads, so i asked around at work, and as is the custom here, the men are the ones who choose the wedding place, since they are the ones paying, so i was given the number of one woman's husband to call, but my husband never did. we looked around at one other place in a nearby town called Floria, but it was very expensive. so after only looking a one other place, my husband decided that we should have it at the first place, mostly because he did not feel like looking anymore.
so everything was in place, we chose a photo studio to have photos taken before the wedding. and when i asked about the cake and music, i was told that the wedding locale arranges everything, but that the cake was chocolate cherry and the music would be Turkish. No room for suggestions, but i was just happy that things were actually going to happen. we even had a florist to do the bouquet, which was also outrageous in price considering the size and the fact that they only had roses and baby's breath to choose from.
so i was relieved that everything was taken care of until i had my husband call to check when the hairdresser wanted me to come in for my manicure (it was now saturday, the day before my wedding). he was at work, and called me back and told me that the hairdresser was sorry, but his wife was sick and was not going to be able to do my makeup, and for some reason didn't think it was important to call us. i started hyperventilating, even though i wasn't thrilled with the test she had done, the thought of having to do my own makeup was making my blood pressure rise. i ran to the nearest shopping mall where there was a sephora and bought some makeup that i needed, and some fake, but natural looking eyelashes, after trying to explain to the shop attendant in Watson's that i didn't want eyeliner, i wanted eyelashes, not being able to find the word in my pocket dictionary.
so the next morning, i showed up at 8am, had my hair washed & set in curlers and sat under a deafening dryer (does anyone still use them?) for close to 2 hours and then was told that his wife was going to try to make it. she was not even sick, she was depressed! so after my makeup was finished, we were running a half hour late. when he removed the metal curlers, to my horror, the hairdresser didn't even try to brush out hard, fake looking curls that covered my head like a doll. i was speechless. my hair looked exactly like the photos of what i told him i did not want, as my husband tried to explain that all i wanted was it to look like what he had done in the test. so he tried to blow it out, but it ended up flattening it near the roots, and just flipping up at the ends. i was fighting back tears as he stuck my veil at the base of my head with a thousand hairpins (i had requested to be able to remove my veil) as i came to realize that he didn't have any experience with wedding hair, but was doing his best.
i ran out to change, as my husband was telling me that he needed a hair trim - why was he asking this now when we were an hour late for the photo studio? because he just thought of it.
his cousin was sweet enough to be our chauffeur and had the car washed & decorated and picked up my bouquet. they insist on putting bouquets on the cars here, and even though we told them that the tulle was enough, they insisted, like it would be bad luck or bad taste to not have it done. i was learning that weddings here are all about compromise.
so we made it to the studio, averted as many cheesy poses & backgrounds as possible, and then made it to the wedding on time, because i had scheduled in an hour of photos be the river before the wedding, which we had to skip.
more later...like the giant 5 tier fake wedding cake!