WHERE did you get married?

[dwfunk]

I would like to hear from the marrieds where you got married, and  why?  When did you get married, in relation to her arrival in the  USA and why and how did you get married?  Did a Sea Captain marry  you?  A commercial wedding chapel?  In your back yard by your  best friend who is an "ordained" minister. At the Justice of the  Peace?  etc.

For example, in a wedding chapel by a priest (what kind) and then if  you would, please give us your thoughts on how you derived those plans,  etc. , how did they turn out, would you do anything different?   Did you get married more than once? (to her that is)  Here for  your family, there for her family, etc., how did that work out?

I'm especially interested in knowing how any ones marriage experience went in an Orthodox church.

Thanks for your input.


--
David & Natalia
Republic of Texas/Moscow, Russia
http://www.davidandnataliafunk.org/
http://www.russianwomanwiki.net/



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[BC]

We married in RU. Quite nice ZAGS ceremony.. much nicer than civil ceremonies in EU.

We could have gotten married here in IT while she was on a tourist visa but decided it would be much nicer and more important to celebrate there with her family.

Cost was also a benefit.. Nice full 'shebang' with all the trimmings was a total of 2.5 to 3K US in RU.  Limo's, wedding dress, music, reception, etc etc etc..

Planning on an Orthodox ceremony in RU for the near future inviting friends and family from US and EU.

[jb]

Much the same as BC's experience, married in Moscow, at the ZAGS Wedding Palace.  Very nice ceremony, complete with 5 or 6 piece string orchestra, all family and friends in attendance.  Custom made wedding dress, enough flowers to bury Lenin three times over, wedding photographer, pictures before and after, and even a videotape of the whole thing, an all afternoon Limo ride all over town for pictures, several bottles of chilled bubbly were consumed in the limo, and a reception feast afterwards.  I don't remember the total cost of the day, but 2.5-3K sounds about right.  We did not have a pauper's wedding.

A few months after she arrived here we did the Orthodox wedding in the Church, unfortunately, the local Orthodox Church here is Greek, (same thing, different language).  Since I speak a bit of Russian I understood what I was getting into at the Russian wedding, since I don't speak one word of Greek, the Church wedding remains a beautiful mystery to me. About all I can tell you is, it took about an hour and that's the first time I ever wore a crown.

My wife and I both had been married before, but never in Church, so the Orthodox Church wedding was especially important to her, I think even her mother breathed a sigh of relief to know her daughter was at last, "properly" married.

I joked about the double dipping only once, I was informed that this was it, now that we were married in the Church, there's be no more divorce talk in our family.  So I guess I'm now "properly" married too.

[BC]

jb,

Yes.. 'proper' wedding..  regularly talking about it and doing some planning every now and then seems to be a good indicator of the direction in our marriage.

Sure beats '50 ruble divorce' comments..

[dwfunk]

My wife and I both had been married before, but never in Church, so the Orthodox Church wedding was especially important to her, I think even her mother breathed a sigh of relief to know her daughter was at last, "properly" married.

Question about the Orthodox Church.  Natalia wants us to get married in "The Church," meaning the Orthodox Church and also in my church.  The dilemma arises in that causal query's to the Orthodox Churches here indicate they will not marry an Orthodox person to a non-Orthodox person.  Did any of you encounter this? And if so, how did you resolve it?


--
David & Natalia
Republic of Texas/Moscow, Russia
http://www.davidandnataliafunk.org/
http://www.russianwomanwiki.net/


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[jb]

David,

The Orthodox Church recognizes the rites of some other Churches to be valid, and does not recognize hardly any of the popular American protestant sects.  In order for the Orthodox Church to do the deed for you and your wife, you would have to be baptized into one of the recognized  churches, i.e., Roman Catholic, or, I think, the  Anglican, otherwise known as the Protestant Episcopal Church of England.  I don't know all of the recognized Churches, but a consultation with an Orthodox priest should get that information for you. 

[BC]

dwfunk,

IIRC The delima you describe referrs to Orthodox and non-Christian mixed faith marriages i.e. Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, etc..

[jb]

seems to be a good indicator of the direction in our marriage.

Yep, when the woman is determined to do the Church wedding with you, it sure rules out her being a GCG.  

These women seem to take very seriously the Church wedding, more so than a civil ceremony, as if they view that as the cement that binds forever.  When a woman wants to get married again in the Orthodox Church, I'm pretty sure they intend to stay hitched for life.   

Maybe there is a test of sincerity in there somewhere for the newbies to consider, asking the g/f if they'd want to get married in Church or not. 

[Son of Clyde]

We had an informal ceremony. Someday I hope we can have the fancy church wedding and a second ceremony in Ukraine for her family to see.

 

[jb]

IIRC The delima you describe referrs to Orthodox and non-Christian mixed faith marriages i.e. Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, etc..  

That too,, I can't imagine an Orthodox priest doing a wedding between a Eastern Orthodox woman and a non-christian.  The Orthodox Church is very much more strict about such things.  They pretty much follow the same guidelines as the Roman Catholics.  So if your church is at odds with the Catholics, don't expect too much help from the Orthodoxies.

[Rvrwind]

Tver, Russia & what a party!!!!!!

RVR-Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner

[philb]

I just returned from getting married in Kiev.  We were married in an Orthodox church on 19 Feb. followed by the wedding at ZAGS (aka Bermuda triangle) in Kiev a couple of days later.

Alla is Orthodox and I am Lutheran.  JB is correct in regards to the baptism.  There are many protestant churches considered to be "sects" by the Orthodox church and they do not recognize baptisms performed in them.  The Orthodox church considers baptism a means of grace rather than a symbol or a decision by the one who is baptized. 

 Also many protestant groups are accused of proselytizing members of the Orthodox Church in the FSU.  Often these groups refuse to recognize infant baptisms and tell those who were baptized as infants that they need to be baptized a second time.  Obviously the Orthodox Church does not take kindly to this, so there is probably a bit of tit for tat going on too. Sorry for the digression.

Another issue is children.  Prior to them allowing us to get married in the church we had to pay a couple of visits to the Metropolitan's offices at Pechersk Lavra.  The first visit was to make a formal request and the second was to meet with a representative of the church.

At this meeting we were asked about my baptism and asked to sign a paper stating that any children we might have would be baptized in the Orthodox Church.  I had no problem with this since first we won't be having any children and even if we did I would not object to this baptism since it is Trinitarian and as a Lutheran my beliefs in regards to baptism are very similar to the Orthodox Church's beliefs. 

The prior posters all make mention of how seriously many FSU women and their familiies take a wedding performed in a church.  This was certainly true in our case, although I think that this would obviously vary depending on their beliefs.

 

[ConnerVT]

To steer a bit back on course...

Natalya and I were married here in the US, in a park next to Lake Champlain, on a beautiful early summer day.  The service was performed by a JP (she is also a representative to the VT state house and a neighbor of ours).  In attendance was our son, my best friend (as best man), and a woman that Natalya made friends with in her ESL class (maid of honor).  Little did we know, the best man and maid of honor ended up marrying each other nine months later! 

We didn't push hard for the church wedding for a number of reasons: None of her family, and little of mine, live nearby;  She had the big church wedding with her first marriage; and the time, effort, and expense would of been overwhelming to pull it off ourselves while she and a 5 y.o. boy were adjusting to life in a new home, in a new country.  It was busy enough to arrange all the things we did do for our small civil ceremony.

One year later, when we returned to Russia, we had a full blown celebration -- Food, drink, rented cafe, drink, music, dancing, drink, for about 35-40 people.  Family, friends, co-workers were all there to celebrate our marriage.

[ConnerVT]

Tver, Russia & what a party!!!!!!

I'll verify that information as true...  :dude:

(Don't make me bust out the photos of drunk men dancing in funny hats...)

[jb]

OMG~!  Is that Richard doing the Fandango?  How funny.  (Also glad I was able to destroy all the candid photos from our wedding party)

[Vaughn]

Arranging our own wedding was one item we discussed at length when Elvira arrived.  We checked out a few places and decided this small chapel suited us just fine. There were about 30 in attendance, including my sisters, our children, an old buddy from Air Force days, and five special friends whose wives all hail from Elvira's hometown. Afterwards, we retreated to the reserved upper floor of a quaint historic restaurant where we celebrated. Since nearly everyone was from out of town, the festivities migrated over to our house.



I'm enjoying hearing of others' experience - and wish I'd had the chance to witness a Russian wedding. I understand the celebration is a long-term event.

[Killer-B]

I'm not married (yet) but find this thread to be of great value and interest - for I'm looking at doing it "over there" - so will be interested in seeing the pros and cons...



That said, I got a bigger kick David out of your PDF Application for Permission to Date my Daughter form!!!! TOOOOO FUNNNNYYY!!!!:D

 http://www.davidandnataliafunk.org/Application%20for%20permission%20to%20date%20my%20daughter.pdf

Good going man!!! :-)

Killer-B

(now post some PIX!!) :brightidea:

 

[Jet]

  Did a Sea Captain marry you? 

 

As a matter of fact, a Sea Captain DID marry us :cool:



Liliya arrived in the US Aug 26 2003 and we married on Nov 3 2003. I wanted her to have enough time to decide for herself if the USA was were she wanted to live, and that I was the husband she wanted to live with . We spent quite a bit of time planning the Key West wedding (and honeymoon), which was originally supposed to take place aboard a 70' schooner. Bad weather caused a last minute venue change, but the ceremony which included only us, my parents, and my brother & his wife, was an incredibly beautiful and a day I'll remember all my life. We even got the captain to include a few words from the old Russian fairy tail "Scarlet Sails" in the ceremony.

I had suggested an Orthodox wedding, but Liliya follows her faith with strong devotion, and since she had married her first husband in church, she was not comfortable with us getting married there while her Ex is still living (so yes newbies - a church wedding is a HUGE deal).

[dwfunk]

[user=505]Killer-B[/user] wrote:

[size="2"][color="blue"]That said, I got a bigger kick [color="red"]David[/color] out of your PDF[/color] [/size][color="#800080"][size="2"]Application for Permission to Date my Daughter[/size][/color][size="2"][color="#003333"] [color="blue"]form!!!! TOOOOO FUNNNNYYY!!!!:D[/color][/color]
[color="#003333"](now post some PIX!!) :brightidea:[/color][/size]

Our first foster daughter came with the original version of the "Application."  Then my oldest daughter showed up with another version, filled out, and a boy friend, now her husband.  I combined the two, tweaked it some, and have had a lot of fun with it.

5 daughters and 2 foster daughters are in this pic, the youngest 2 are now 13 and 15, the flower girl is Holly's sister-in-law:

--
David & Natalia
Republic of Texas/Moscow, Russia
http://www.davidandnataliafunk.org/
http://www.russianwomanwiki.net/

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[Vaughn]

I howled at the "allow 4-6 years for processing".

Edit: David, Thanks for resizing that photo, it did

justice to all those pretty faces....


Vaughn

[Voyageur]

We got married at a quiet ceremony at the local Justice of the Peace.  We had a dinner with my family afterwards.

[catzenmouse]

We also did a quiet wedding with a JP. Elena arrived on Dec 10, 2004 and we married on Jan 7, 2005. Gives us a double celebration to this day now. We talked about waiting longer but we had already decided that we wanted to be together so there was no real reason to wait the entire 90 days. So far so good as she hasn't tossed me out the door yet...

Went out to a Japanese restaurant afterwards as Elena had never had this kind of dinner. She enjoyed it very much and we even took her picture with the chef. Sergei was enjoying the show until the onion volcano part. The flames scared him (dummy me did not think to have Elena warn him about the fire... DUH!) so he spent the rest of dinner sitting on my lap.

 We've talked about getting married again with her family present but have not really come to any real decision on that yet.

Ken

[Rvrwind]

I'm starting to notice a trend here!!! Everytime Fred posts pics I notice he always leaves himself out...mmmm....now where did I put those pictures!!!!

RVR-Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner

[jb]

Richard,

I think you should get even.  Do you have any pics of Fred, drunk, doing the Samba, wearing a funny hat?  (If not, I can phony something up in PhotoShop for you and we will claim it's him).

[Son of Clyde]

I like the quiet ceremonies, I invited my parents, my brother and my wife's friend and interpreter. My stepson was our photographer and did a commendable job. We had a quiet lunch at a Chinese restaurant. We went to our apartment, drank some vodka and opened presents. There was a second party for my family and friends.