Beginning the ceremony

The photos above show the people who helped to make the ceremony happen. The musicians as well as the folklorists, who are husband and wife. They truly made it a beautiful day for us.

Everything began as the guests came close together in a circle around the place where the fire would be built. We passed a ball of yarn around the circle, creating a circle to unite us. Then a "laimes akmens" was strung onto the yarn, this is a rock which is found in nature with a perfect hole in it. As the rock was passed around the circle, each guest introduced him/herself and how they knew us. Now that we all knew each other, we could begin!
The first order of business was making a wreath of flowers for me. This was the last time that I would get to wear a flower wreath, as they are only for unmarried women; married women covered their heads. However, before the flower wreath could be finished, KB and I each had to take a close look at all of the flowers that had been woven into the wreath, and smell them as well. Then we each had to choose the one that was our favorite. Here we are looking, smelling, choosing... :)


For those of you who don't know, I actually suffer from some pretty serious allergies this time of year from some sort of flower pollens. The allergies show up in my eyes, which become crazy red, really puffy and ridiculously itchy. Usually it actually hits me at the end of the summer (making me a fun sight as the "new teacher" on the first days of school!) but this year they were bugging me early. I had gone to the pharmacy to pick up some allergy medicine to start taking about a week before the wedding. They of course didn't have my usual medicine at the time, so I took a replacement. Anyway, during this part of the ceremony, I was really getting nervous about whether the new medicine would do it's job.

After we had chosen our favorite flowers and picked one out of the wreath, we were instructed to gently rub it over each other's faces. This was a way to mark each other with our favorite scent so that we would always know when the other was coming and we could even find each other in the dark. I had chosen a jasmine flower. I was so lucky that KB had chosen a fern leaf, as I was pretty sure that was not what I am allergic to! (That also got a pretty good laugh from the crowd, as "flowering ferns" are what young couples go off into the woods to look for on the night of the summer solstice - as we all know ferns do not flower, it's just a good excuse to go off into the woods....) :) In the end, all was well, and the new allergy medicine worked beautifully. My flower wreath was finished off by my vedeju mate, and we were ready to begin!