Table 22

I couldn’t help but smile to myself in the backseat of the taxi when peaking out over the rooftops I could just make out the large birdcage-like structure perched atop a big abandoned house. I had frequently used this strange site as a landmark in the village to orient myself and seeing it again after a month away felt like coming home. My English club that morning had been more chaotic than normal. Our usual classroom with a smart board was occupied so my counterpart and I had to retrofit another empty classroom with a projector and speakers so that I could present the video I had designed my lesson around. Students dragged in chairs from the hallway and sat along the back wall once the desks filled up. One of the games I had planned would have been far easier with the touchscreen board, but we managed by having students take turns kneeling down and typing answers on my laptop. The students were smart and avoided doing what I did and connecting their knees to the ground when they knelt down. A student gently called my attention during the lesson and informed me that my jeans were covered with a dusty brown stain across my shins. But a less-than-perfect class couldn’t sour my mood as I headed to meet up with my PST host family for a wedding. I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t gone with my original plan of wearing my wedding outfit to class and leaving straight from school.

I didn’t have to wait long after exiting the taxi outside the village church because within minutes my host brother pulled up in his white Toyota Camry; the same car that I had loaded my suitcases and official Peace Corps water filter into when I first arrived back in March. He brought me to the bride’s house only a few seconds’ drive away where I waded through crowds of joyful guests into a living room and was greeted by my host mom in the doorway. She immediately fell back into her role as my handler and guided me to where I should stand. I caught glimpses of my host sisters, who were both wearing gorgeous floor-length gowns and had their hair and makeup done perfectly. The orange sundress and cream-colored sandals that I had splurged on with my modest living stipend felt rather casual in comparison, but it was roasting hot and I felt grateful to be dressed in light cotton. The bride sat in a corner of the room accepting gifts of candy and being fawned over by various relatives. Her dress was long-sleeved with a massive hoop skirt and jewels encrusted over the entire bodice down to her fingers. She wore a sparkling tiara over her simple updo. Soon after my arrival, it was time for the groom’s first look at the bride. A videographer circled the room as the young groom entered and first saw his bride. Shouts of celebration erupted from the 30 or so people crammed into the room.

From there, the entire wedding party moved to the church. The ceremony was short but beautiful, as the couple stood in the middle of the sanctuary surrounded by their loved ones. At one point, my host sisters and I did have to stifle our laughter because the ceremonial crown that the priest placed on the groom was slightly too big for his head and wouldn’t stay up which forced the poor groom to keep having to adjust it while reciting his vows. While the couple took photos with their immediate family inside the church, the rest of the guests lined up outside with paper cones filled with rose petals. We all kept thinking the couple was about to exit the church and would gather the petals in our hands poised to toss, only to see they were still taking pictures. This happened a few times before they really made their departure and we all doused them in flowers as they walked down the path out to the main street. Throughout the event, people frequently asked me what differences there were between American and Armenian weddings and I do have to say that the extended periods of waiting between parts of the wedding seems to be a universal constant across cultures.

After the church, it was time to make our way to the groom’s home on the other end of the village. This house I was very familiar with as it belonged to my host uncle whose barbecues I had frequently attended while living in the village. It was at one of these barbecues that he had first invited me to this wedding. As my host family was related to the groom, they took on more of an active role at this house. I was instructed to hold a basket of flowers and stand next to my host sister who was holding a platter of candy. When the newly married couple entered the front courtyard, the mother of the groom draped large loaves of lavash over each of their shoulders and fed them honey from a spoon. She then grabbed a handful of rose petals from my basket and motioned for me to do the same. We threw them over the heads of the couple and tried to narrow our aim to offset the breeze which blew them slightly to the left. A small folk band filed out of the house and played while everyone danced and sang around the bride and groom. Inside was a table absolutely piled with food and decorated intricately with greenery and flowers. I imagine that the women in the family must have woken up at the crack of dawn to assemble it. My host mother and sisters began distributing food from the table to the guests and made sure that I sampled everything. After an hour or so of munching and drinking, it was time to head to the reception.

We piled into my host brother’s car and set off to the larger neighboring town to the reception hall. I recognized it from my host brother and sister-in-law’s wedding video which I had watched with them on one of my last nights of training. We sat in the lobby for a bit waiting to be let into the main hall. The groom’s mother came and sat with me and asked if I was enjoying myself so far. I wished that I had enough of a command of Armenian to convey how much fun I was having but all I could say was “Yes, very VERY much.” She smiled at my answer and pinched my cheek hard with approval. My host brother was walking around with a handwritten list of table assignments and instructing people on where to sit once the doors opened. He, my host sisters, and I were seated at a table together, table 22. The rest of the table was comprised of 8 or 9 single men in their mid to late 20s in what I am sure was a strategic decision as only a few hours earlier the groom’s parents had asked me when they should expect to be invited to MY wedding. The table was already covered with trays of food and bottles of water, soda, juice, wine, vodka, and cognac. The rapturous bachelors wasted no time in pouring the first round of shots and making a toast. I adopted a strategy of accepting a refill every other toast as I’ve come to learn that in spite of my desire to seem like I can hang with the guys, I absolutely cannot keep up with Armenian men in the field of vodka.

Soon the dancing began. The bride and groom’s first dance was complete with lighting changes and pyrotechnics which caught me by surprise. My host sisters were excellent dancers and insisted that I accompany them out to the dance floor once the first song came on. I felt incredibly awkward at first because there weren’t a lot of us out on the floor, and all the other guests (more than 100 I think) were watching us. I observed my host sisters and slowly began to mimic their movements. They shifted their weight from foot to foot and moved their hips to the beat of the music in a similar fashion to how I would usually dance when I went out with friends to bars in the U.S. They held their arms up nearly above their shoulders and elegantly swished their hands through the air like they were spreading paint on a canvas. Their fingers were elongated and tilted slightly up like how a ballerina might hold her hands. After a few songs, I felt I had internalized this style and soon forgot all about the people watching, or the fact that I didn’t know any of the words to the songs. With a few exceptions, when I stayed at my table to rest for a minute, I danced with my host siblings, my host mom, and the guys from our table for nearly every song. For a couple of songs, I was included in some traditional Armenian dances that involved holding hands in a circle and stepping to the side. I kept my eyes trained on the shoes of the person next to me to try and copy their footwork but mostly I just let myself be dragged along. When a slower song came on, my host brother and his wife and my host sister and one of her cousins took to the floor. I stayed at the table content to watch, but one of the guys at my table cordially offered me his hand for a dance. I don’t think I’ve slow danced with someone since high school and it actually did feel very similar to a school dance. My host siblings exchanged playful glances and comments with me and my dance partner as we all swayed around each other.

During one song, my host mom’s brother whom I had met on many occasions found me on the dance floor and exclaimed that he hadn’t even recognized that it was me at first because I looked like a real Armenian. Soon it came time for the bouquet throw. My younger host sister pulled me along with her to the stage. There were only 5 of us single women contending for the prize. I thought to myself that there was no way we were the only unmarried women in the room, and that surely there were more who just opted not to participate. When the bouquet came sailing towards us, my host sister hilariously dove out of the way of it which made me feel too shy to reach out for it even though it fell right at my feet. I reached down to grab it and noticed the woman next to me was doing the same so I handed it to her as I was a little anxious to be known as the most single girl there. When it came time for the men’s turn, the crowd vying to compete was significantly larger and more enthusiastic. They all reached for the corsage and someone I hadn’t met succeeded in wrestling it away from the others. But the man that I had danced with managed to snag a petal and triumphantly returned to our table to show his prize to the rest of the guys.

Hours and hours of dancing, eating, toasting, and laughing later it was nearing midnight, and was time to depart the venue. We returned to the groom’s home to help clean up from earlier in the day. I was handed an ice cream bar and instructed to sit on the couch and wait while the other women cleaned and the men continued drinking outside. Normally, I would have protested and tried to join the cleaning but after such an exciting day I was content to sit and rest my feet. It wasn’t until about 1 in the morning that my host family and I finally returned to our house and all collapsed into our beds. The next morning we all slept late and groggily ate breakfast together before making one more trip back to the groom’s house. There we joined the rest of the extended family in sitting outside and eating the leftover catering from the night before while debriefing on the evening’s events. From what I could gather, the newlyweds has already departed early that morning for their honeymoon in Egypt. My host father asked where I learned how to dance like an Armenian and I told him that Peace Corps had taught us. This wasn’t entirely untrue, we had had a few sessions of traditional Armenian dance during our training but I did not retain a single step. Mostly, I had just decided to pretend to know what I was doing and apparently, it had paid off. That’s kind of been my strategy for my whole Peace Corps journey so far and it’s been working fairly well. I wished I could stay with them all drinking coffee in the early afternoon sun and looking out at Mt. Ararat, but it was time for me to return to my permanent site. I said my goodbyes and promised that I would return to visit again soon.

I spent the 2-hour journey home via public transportation engaging in my favorite hobby of listening to music in my headphones while gazing out the window. When I got home, I gave my permanent site host mother the party favor that I had promised to obtain for her as she collects them. The photographers at the wedding had printed out some photos they had taken of each table and handed them back out to us before the party ended. My host siblings gave me the photo of all of us to keep. I hung it up in my room immediately upon returning. Now, I can look at it every day and remember the chaos, and excitement, and sheer joy that was my first Armenian wedding.