Our first Polish wedding!

We had the honor and privilege of attending our first Polish wedding for a woman who works for Tom.  We went to the small town of Siedlice, about an hour outside of Warsaw to celebrate.  We've always wanted to attend a Polish wedding after hearing rumors of all night dancing and a liter of vodka per person on the table.  And, yes, we found both of these things to be ABSOLUTELY TRUE!  We started at the bride, Marta's, parents house for a blessing and ceremony where Marta's parents gave her away to her husband to be.  As the couple left the house and got into their car they threw traditional Polish candies out to all of the guests watching.  Then, we followed the caravan of cars to the church.  The mass was of course all in Polish and was a traditional Catholic ceremony from what we could make of it.  The Poles don't mess around with their religion....there were four priests officiating and The mass was over an hour in length!   We then proceeded to the reception hall which had a live band and a DJ. Instead of the usual tpround tables of 8 or 10 people like we are used to the Poles have super long banquets tables that easily sit up to 50 people each.  And, on these tables were plates and plats of appetizers and salads along with juice and soda mixers and of course, vodka!  And, as soon as you barely touched a bottle the servers were bringing a new and full one!  We were served a soup and main dish course and assumed this was the meal for the evening.  It was delicious Polish food!  Little did we know that this was one of four served coursed meals served throughout the night from 7:30pm - 4:30am...yes, you read that right?! And in between they had a fruit and dessert buffet as well as a buffet of smoked and cured meats and sausages and pierogi.  Tom was in heaven.   We finally started understand a bit why they served so much food and drink when we saw the dancing!  It was awesome....and EVERYONE was dancing no matte their age.  The Poles boogied down.  And, in between the "normal" music were a ton of local Polish songs that each had their own choreographed dances that everyone except Tom and I knew.  : ). At midnight they started the traditional Polish wedding games.  Apparently this is done at almost every Polish wedding and always at midnight.  The games were really fun and involved drinking vodka...of course!  Tom got roped into one of them and wound up having to dress up like a girl for it.  Sadly, we didn't get any pictures of this spectacular moment.  Knowing that a little guy would be up in a few short hours I headed to bed around 1:30am and Tom followed at 3:00am.  Unfortunately, Finn didn't get the message about sleeping in.  We were able to stay in a hotel room above the reception hall which worked out great!  And, we could actually hear the party still going on at 6:00 am when Finn started to wake up.  Wow!  We had a blast at our first Polish wedding and loved taking part in and witnessing such cool cultural traditions!  Wishing Marta and Karol a lifetime of happiness!

Month 5!

We've already shared a lot of month 5 photos since most of the month was spent with a number of fun visitors all coming to spend time with Mr. Finnegan.