Spanish Wedding

Ah weddings, those lovely parties in which you spend the money of a holidays just to eat in a restaurant with some friends and a lot of strangers. They are so lovely! Today I will explain how weddings work in Spain.

First thing you need to know is that once you mention the word wedding there is a magic that makes prices rise a crazy amount. But don't take it wrong, this is because we value love a lot.

Ok let's be serious. A proper Spanish wedding starts in a church. Of course you can get married in a city council or even in by a notary, but the traditional way is a Catholic church.

The tradition says the guests come first, they wait for the couple at the door and then comes the fiancé and after a while the bride. The fiancé comes just as a human being by car, but the bride usually comes as if she were Beyonce in a luxury car. For the guests everything is very happy while they wait under a strong sun standing up with their mobile phones ready to  take pictures.

So they go into the church and we have a mass. The mass is longer than usual because the priest usually takes the opportunity to talk to some people to give a speech. This speech can be about love (against divortion), life (agains abortion) or money (about a social cause they are supporting and for which they expect you to give money at the end).

Between the guest there are two traditional behaviours. The most polite ones stay there heroically while the speech goes on thinking about the food and alcohol they will have later. The less polite will talk in a low voice about gossips:

• mens about that beautiful girl over there...her figure, her legs..you know church stuff,
• womens about all the mistakes the protocol of this wedding have,
• the small amount of people that really love the couple will talk about how pretty they bride is and how thrilled and/or proud is someone.

Between 30 and 45 minutes later everyone is happy outside the church taking photos of the couple. This can take a long time, but the sun shouldn't be so strong at this point so who cares?

Then the couple may go to take some official photos by a professional photographer that since having heard the word wedding will charge 2000 or 3000 euros for some hours of work. In the meantime the guests start to drink.

Once the couple comes back from the photo shoot, the dinner starts. Typically you will enjoy some starters (ham), a first dish (something very modern like a soup of artichokes with several species that nobody likes really, but that is very beautiful to take more pictures) and the main dish (fish or meat at your convenience).

The dinner is divided in several tables, so you have to pray that the couple getting married have put you with someone nice. If you are in your twenties o thirties and there is someone slightly older, you can be sure that eventually you will answer questions like: when will you two get married? when will you two have a son? It is the time to smile and nodd and answer something funny but not offensive. This last is the most difficult part.

Once the dinner is over, the party starts. It is basically a big dance room with some tables where you will listen to all kind of awful but fun music to dance. If you don't dance you are f...ocused in the alcohol. If you don't drink alcohol either...well tomorrow you will rest.