The wedding trip to Estonia

My first born has been organising this wedding with his bride to be since the beginning of the year. It had to be something special with all of the effort that he and Iris, the bride to be had put into the event. It was phenomenal, amazing and many more superlatives and something to remember for the rests of my miserable life….. 😉 Iris is Estonian and met George in Australia and have been together ever since, though a year in New Zealand and then time back in the home country of Ireland. I imagine It was a little more difficult to arrange a wedding to take place back in Estonia when you are living in Ireland, but the managed it. What an amazing achievement, a wedding that was without any shadow of a doubt, worth travelling thousands of kilometres from Catalonia to go and be there and experience.

Getting to Estonia

The first hurdle was the need to get time of work during the busiest period of the holiday season at the campsite where I work during the summer. Despite worrying about it, there was no problem as the boss at the campsite was very understanding about the requirement to go to a sons wedding. It isn’t really a choice – As a dad you just have to be there. There were some issues to sort out with the mother of George, which at one point seemed insurmountable, fortunately we were able to eventually overcome the difficulties. All part of the rich tapestry of life….

The trip

Ryanair was the airline that had flights to get us there the day before the wedding and bring us home at the end of the weekend. At the end of the trip we were wishing it could have been a longer trip, but it seemed to be spot on with the getting time off work when the flights were booked. Usual sort of trip with Ryanair down to the on time arrival fanfare which your can do without.

 

We were expecting to be getting a bus from the airport to the centre of Tallinn the capital city of Estonia. Imagine my surprise and delight to be confronted with the grinning cheeky faces of first one of my sons and then the main participant of the wedding, George. He had rented a car for the weekend and picked both us and also a friend arriving at the same time to the airport. Seeing as we had been awake since 4am I was very grateful to have a chauffeur to get us to Haapsalu which is the town that Iris comes from.

Haapsalu -ly Marvellous

That was a joke that was well used over the weekend and never seemed to get old. The hostel/hotel we stayed at for that first night was lovely. We booked it through AirBNB and the price was great and the room delightful. Shoes off to go upstairs to the rooms to help keep the nice shiny wooden floors in good condition. Beds were constructed from old wooden doors, not too bouncy, but gave me a great nights’ sleep. There was a kitchen downstairs where you could cook if you wanted to, but with getting totally stuffed with great food in the local cafes, it was not needed. The waitresses were beautiful and the food was to die for. Well the cakes especially were fantastic. I have to admit to some gluttony and I would have loved the opportunity to taste more of the goodies. Nice that there was plenty of choice for the vegetarian too. The only thing to do following the getting stuffed in the best cafe in Haapsalu was to go for a walk to discover the town.

Haapsalu geography

The town is right on the coast and there is a spit of land that sticks out into the Baltic Sea. Weird thing is the lake which is in the middle of this. When you are at the coast you always can know where you are by aligning yourself to the side where the sea is, at this place though it was confusing due to the large lake in the middle. Good job we had a map and so we didn’t get lost. Whilst walking along the promenade we bumped into friends along the way who had also made the long journey to be at George’s wedding.

The town is a holiday destination with many festivals taking place over the weekends. There is a jazz festival next weekend and also art festivals to visit. The castle seems to be used as a place to host the musical type of festival, not much left of the castle apart from the walls, but a very good place for wedding photos too.

The houses of the town are lovely, most are wood fronted and there were a mixture of houses that needed a lot of work and some that had been nicely renovated and painted in various colours, mostly pastel colour. I liked the run down houses best as they were just bursting with old world character. All of the houses had stocks of wood all piled up in the gardens, getting ready for the winter and the -20 degrees Celsius temperature. Obviously important and no wonder that chopping wood would play a part of the wedding celebrations.

During the challenges that George was dealing with chopping and sawing wood into slightly smaller pieces, Iris was given tasks that were of the traditional female sort which feminists would undoubtedly complain about, changing clothes on a baby doll or creating a meal from ingredients provided. One of the challenges for Iris was something to do with making a thread from something that would be used in the house somehow or other.

The tradition is that anyone can stop the bride and groom on the way from the wedding and test their suitability for being a married couple. If they are not part of the wedding group before that then they can be considered a part of it afterwards. We hadn’t had this explained to us and thought that the traffic jam that was in front of us on the way from the wedding was due to the motorbike and side car having broken down or something. Eventually we worked out that we were supposed to get out of the cars and witness these events. Not a great day for everyone else trying to get around Haapsalu on the day of a wedding. I got a picture of my son wielding an axe and a bit of video too. Most of these things took place on the way to the castle for the official photo shoot, but there were also a couple of stops on the way from the town to the reception at Tuksi.

Who’s the boss then?

Well it was funny when Iris had to shout instructions to George to help her out of the boat. She had forgotten to tell him that it was his job to do that. He was waiting for the father of the bride to get her out of the boat and bring her to the ceremony. When it came to the photos it was clear that Iris was the boss of the photographer which was great. Always seems terrible when you get a bossy photographer at a wedding. I was surprised that he chose to shoot into the sun at the castle, I am hoping that the flash that he used compensates enough. If it works then the photos will look stunning and will have that pop to make them special. He took some photos of the couple with the motorbike and side car to simulate the scene of her running after the bike while he was escaping or had forgotten her. These photos will be great in the album. Normally family wedding photos are boring, but I can’t wait to see these. Should see a pile of shared photos online in various places too. Hope someone sets up a Dropbox folder or something, maybe a Flickr album to be shared would be the thing.

On the way to Tuksi

It was on the way to the reception venue that we had the extra entertainment of climbing of the stork tower. There was a garden with a shed in it and the chimney from this had a storks nest on top of it. No storks were at home but we did see some in the fields nearby. George was given the dangerous task of climbing up the tower as far as he dared or was able and to tie a ribbon around the chimney. As we are all aware it is the stork that brings the babies to a couple. Higher up the chimney would mean that the babies would come sooner and the more times around the chimney meant more babies. George was sensible to put only one ribbon going around the thing, even so that took a bit of doing without falling and breaking the neck. George being a climber obviously had to beat the height of the ribbon that was already there and he successfully did that by a decent amount. Well done son!

There were gifts given to the fathers of the happy couple at this point. The brides father gets the gift and given back the family name that she has been using up until now when she takes the family name of George.

Huts in the Woods for sleeping in

Took a couple of pictures including some spherical pictures to show the accommodation in Tuksi. Surprisingly comfortable and four persons to each room. We ended up sharing with my friend Franks’ daughter and her boyfriend and it worked out fairly well. Freya and Luke are both lovely and I’ve known Freya since she was a baby. These rooms were not used that much anyway, only for a wee bit of sleeping after dawn broke at the end of the wedding feast and party. I was glad when the music finally stopped as the heavy bass easily made its way through the trees to us.