Living la Vida Boda
Family arrives
Immediate family started converging to Salamanca on Thursday night before the wedding. Michael and Lindsay arrived in good spirits after a 22 hour journey from Seattle with a layover in London and drove 2 hours from Madrid. Somehow, they were able to make it out that night until 10 pm for tapas with 3 small children.
Pre-wedding tapas in the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca
The rest of the extended family and friends arrived on Friday afternoon in time for the pre-wedding tapas party from 9 pm to about 1:15 am. Luis secretly had organized for a group of Spanish tunos (about 12 musicians) to play songs like Guantanamera, Cielito Lindo, and El Rey. Sandra and I were strongly encouraged to dance in the center while being serenaded. Since we had taken some bachata/salsa classes, we didn't completely embarrass ourselves. Sandra was completely in her element as a hostess/social butterfly making all 100+ guests feel welcome. By the end of the night, almost everyone had a raspy voice from talking so much.
At the end of the pre-wedding tapas Sam said "Taylor, how are you going to follow-up the wedding after such a fun night?"
"You'll see..." I said
WEDDING DAY
Ceremony 7:15 pm - 8 pm
We decided to have a more personalized wedding ceremony so we wrote our own script. This is considered highly unusual for a Spanish wedding as most Spanish weddings are in Catholic churches and are very formal. In a Spanish wedding the bride and groom sit facing the altar with their backs to the audience. The priest will do a number of readings but typically does not know the bride and groom very well at all. Spanish churches have no air conditioning and most weddings are in summer so almost everyone is fanning themselves constantly. Even with the fanning, most people are super sweaty after the 1-hour ceremony. I have found the traditional wedding ceremonies to be exceptionally boring as you can't really understand anything because there is so much echo from the church acoustics (also in my second language). What you can hear is fairly generic readings not personalized to the bride and groom.
We wanted the wedding to be be more of a celebration. To kick things off, I decided to walk into the song of "We're the Champions" by Queen. One of the elements that was very popular during our ceremony was the addition of audience participation. We knew that the wedding ceremony was going to be highly emotional. We had a very personalized story, and a violinist playing tear-jerkers like:
- Unchained Melody (BSO Ghost)
- Shallow
- Titanic
- Hallelujah
- Marry you
- Can you feel the love tonight
- Stand by me
- I don't want to miss a thing
- I will always love you
- All you need is love
- We found love (sin remix)
To break the tension during the ceremony, I told the audience that at any time I could stop the ceremony and count to three in Spanish; "Uno, dos, tres" and everyone had to shout "Sandra, no llores!", which means "Sandra, don't cry!' It was highly effective at getting Sandra to laugh and also helped break the tension in the audience during the emotional part of the wedding. We wanted the ceremony to have people on the brink of both laughing and crying. All crying is too intense.
"Here comes your half orange", which translates to "Here comes your better half"
After the ceremony we got back into the horse drawn carriage that Sandra had arrived in and exited at full speed. This was not planned. The carriage ended up taking us about a quarter mile away to a parking lot and nobody knew where we were (wedding planner, photographer, our families). We decided to take our first selfie as husband and wife.
Cocktail 8:30 - 10 pm
Electric violinist during the cocktail did a great job setting the lively mood with violin versions of pop songs like Bailando, Wrecking Ball, No Me Acuerdo, Cheerleader, Hasta el Amanecer, Rockabye, and Game of Thrones. The flower boys/girls decided to do an improvised dance for most of the 90 minute cocktail. Pretty incredible considering their normal bedtime is 9 pm and they were dancing until 10 pm and didn't go to bed until closer to 11 pm.
In Spanish wedding they like to have big entrances for everything. The bride arriving in a horse drawn carriage (this is not typical), the bride & groom entering the cocktail, and the bride & groom entering the dinner. This is us entering the cocktail to the music of "Bailando" by Enrique Iglesias
Entering dinner was an explosion of energy. We entered to will.i.am "This is Love" and all 165 guests were on their feet waving Spanish and American flags like crazy! I basically followed Sandra around with an American and Spanish flag dancing like an airport traffic control guy.
Flashmob coordinated by the bride. I had no idea. Helped keep the momentum going on a great night.
Dancing after dinner
At 1:15 am, we had the first dance. Spanish weddings are late. EVERYONE was on the dance floor. We had selected the playlist to be a mix of American and Spanish international music so that people from both sides were dancing. Here is the playlist. The first hit of the night was "Jump On It". At first all of the Spaniards were confused by the Americans striking poses to the beat of the song and then dancing in circles like cowboys, but they soon understand and started dancing as well. The night was an interesting mix of classic American wedding songs like "Shout", salsa like "Valio la Pena", bachata like "Stand by Me", rap like "Thrift Shop", 90's hits like Mambo #5, and classic Spanish wedding songs like "Paquito Chocolatero". The party was so good that Sandra's 84 year-old grandmother stayed until 4 am as did he 3 and 6 year-old nieces.
Dancing continued until 6 am at which point I had had too many gin tonics and jamon iberico to keep track. I narrowly escaped being thrown in the pool to chants of "Taylor en la Piscina" to the tune of Guantanamera.
It’s true that weddings are special because everybody important in your life is in one place at the same time. It’s kind of overwhelming because you want to be with everyone simultaneously but cannot. The energy of having this many people gathered in one place is magnetic. At our wedding everyone wanted to celebrate. All dry blankets. The ceremony kicked off the tone of the wedding- this is going to be fun. And the momentum never died. Even before we entered the dinner most of the dining room was already standing and waving their little Spanish and American flags. The dinner had a few moments that kept people’s attention including a flashmob, birthday cake for abuela, and family toasts.
I feel content. This week has been exactly what I wanted, I just wish it could go on longer. This was just a quick summary that won't nearly do justice to what I've experienced. The entire week was like a dream.
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