Surviving an Azerbaijani Wedding
Photo by @cingizoglu_photographer
Anyone who has planned a wedding knows how stressful it can be. So what about if on top of the wedding, you plan to do a Half Marathon with the guests three days before the big day, have your father ask the bride’s father (whom he has never met) for her hand in marriage at a big engagement ceremony four days before, have a henna party the day before and fit in a trip to the remote mountains of Azerbaijan in somewhere in the middle of all that? That was the situation in which I found myself in early May 2024… and it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life.
Photos by @cingizoglu_photographer
So why try to fit in so much in the week before such an important event? The reasons go back to the concerns Turan rightly had all through the first year of our relationship. With strong Muslim influences and patriotism still running strong in Azerbaijani culture, she had worried about sharing our relationship with her family, knowing there was a possibility they could be strongly opposed to her being with a foreign man.
Even when I had proposed to her in April 2023, she wanted to be careful breaking the news to her parents. So even before they knew about us, we planned to have a wedding where the attention could be off us as much as possible, in case the atmosphere did turn out to be as difficult as we feared. If we flew in for the Baku Half Marathon on the weekend, I went to the mountains for a couple of days with my brothers or best friend, then we did the wedding on the following Wednesday before leaving the next day, then there would be limited time and opportunity for us to be under scrutiny.
However, when Turan did tell her parents about us, they were far more supportive than we could have ever dreamed. On a trip to Baku to celebrate her brother’s wedding in October 2023, I gained the seal of approval and we were good to go and plan a much bigger wedding than we had anticipated. In the end, the wedding was planned for over 200 people, with nearly 20 guests making the difficult and expensive trip from abroad, and extra events (the aforementioned engagement ceremony and henna party) planned alongside it.
The week started on Friday 3rd May, with my parents being invited to meet Turan’s parents, Şüküfə and Nizami, and relatives at their home. My parents were in their element -Azerbaijani hospitality is much warmer than what we Brits are used to, and they were treated like royalty. My father and Turan’s charismatic uncle exchanged back slaps and speeches, exclaiming their hopes for our marriage to all present. And of course, we got our first taste of the national dish, plov. Turan’s mother had come along way since hearing that my parents try to avoid eating meat, dairy and fish - after initially surmising that chicken breast must be alright, by the time we arrived she was proudly telling Turan she had made the plov with vegetable oil rather than butter because vegans don’t eat it😂.
The engagement ceremony the next day was much of the same, just far grander. Müşfiq, Turan’s brother, had picked out an excellent restaurant with paintings and items of historical significance lining the walls, meaning that my parents and relatives were treated to their first tour and introduction to Azerbaijani history. There were more speeches, we cut cake decorated with Azerbaijani and British flags, and after more plov, drunk sweet tea to symbolise Turan hunting to her father to accept our marriage proposal. We even tried one Turkish tradition - the bride serving sweet tea to the guests symbolises she wants the marriage to go ahead, whereas salty tea symbolises that she wants to reject the prospective groom’s advances. While sweet tea was served to all guests, Turan gave me a cup of salty tea! If I could drink it while keeping a straight face then it would show I was willing to overcome any obstacle to be with her, and then maybe she would relent and agree to marry me… I am happy to say I passed the test with aplomb. Perhaps too well - there is a good chance Turan will only give me salty tea in future, after I appeared to like it so much😅.
After so much feasting already, it was difficult to imagine that we had to run a Half Marathon the next day. Baku is a great city for many things, but running is not one of them. This has to have been the worst organised race of its size I have ever seen (and it has already been running for nine years😳). This year, 13,900 people had signed up, but only 2,000 finished the race! There was no communication about how to pick up race numbers, leading to many runners being refused entry to the start line when they turned up without one, there was no segregation of faster and slower runners at the start, meaning we had to wait behind hundreds of people who literally started walking once the starting gun went, and the roads were only closed for three hours, which as the average participant walked the whole way, meant that most were not able to finish within the time limit. Despite this, the experience was fun, and our wedding guests did come away with some big results. My friend d’Arcy finished 7th overall in a small PB of 1:15:33, my mum finished first in the over 60 female category, Azinta finished 6th female and Lucy would have been 4th female had she not signed up as a man😆. In the hot and windy conditions, these were amazing results, and led to long hours of reminiscing on our upcoming trip to the mountains.
Straight after the race it was time to rush for the bus to the mountains. Turan had arranged a private minivan to take my friends and I, after we chickened out of driving hire cars in Baku traffic. However, the van driver had other ideas. 20km from Xınalıq, the village where we were due to base ourselves for the next two days, he refused to go any further, citing dangerous roads and difficult conditions. I spent a frustrating hour trying to find signal to call Turan and so she could translate and convince him to go, but in the end she had to call the homestay and get them to come and pick us up. Once we had paid for their pick up service on top of the van driver’s fee we had already close to doubled the original cost of our trip, but once we reached Xınalıq we knew immediately we had made the right decision to persevere. The scenery was stunning! As one of the highest inhabited villages in the Caucasus Mountains, Xınalıq was also relatively untouched, with friendly villagers and a completely different way of life making it an experience we will never forget. We were lucky with the weather too. The next day saw us complete a 24km hike going over 3,200m altitude - a trip with d’Arcy is never going to be easy - where the snow topped mountains could be seen stretching all around us. After hearty home-cooked local food, evenings drinking local vodka thoughtfully provided by Azinta for the ‘bachelor party’ and another d’Arcy inspired 18km trail run the next morning, we were tired, happy and ready to head back to Baku.
We were heading back early because Turan had dropped on me that in the end men were invited to the traditionally women only Henna Party on Tuesday night before the wedding. This meant me getting kitted up in a traditional Azerbaijani costume and reluctantly joining the girls in their pre-wedding dancing and festivities. Turan had a lot of stress organising this one, as constantly changing requirements from her relatives led to late venue changes, but she was fantastic in this atmosphere as always, leading the dancing and generally looking beautiful and graceful as the centre of attention. It was also a chance to see a few friends who had arrived late - Damien and his 12-year old daughter Eva, who had just arrived from Edinburgh, as well as some of Turan’s friends from China. We left late, ears ringing from the loud music, and too wired to get much sleep before the most important day of all - the wedding day.
Wedding day for me started in the only way possible given that I was staying with d’Arcy - with a run up and down the steep streets of Baku. We followed this with the Azerbaijani breakfast full works in the Old Town, then suited up and went to meet Turan. We met her at the wedding dress salon, then after a quick last-minute practice of our first dance (more on that later) we set off to spend the day with the photographers.
The photographer was worth it, as the pictures and video they made were amazing. But there is nothing more tiring than being forced into what amounts to multiple stress-positions while already being stressed and worried about what was coming up that evening. We also had a scare when the Bulgarian President’s wife arrived in the wedding-night hotel, shutting down the traffic in the area for two hours prior to us having to set off from there to go to the wedding party venue. Luckily, it cleared just in time to avoid us having to get the metro in our wedding clothes, and Turan’s best friends Khayala and Narmin were able to drive us to the venue more or less on time.
As we entered, the fun began. After some ceremonial champagne toasting in the middle of the hall with both sets of parents, we started our first dance. We had decided on the music just a few days before - La Vie En Rose, the song the picnicking family next to us had played when I proposed to Turan - and Turan had decided we could do a whole routine rather than just waltz around a bit, despite having no time to practice. Somehow we bungled our way through it - we almost nailed the routine, despite Turan’s dress making some moves we had practiced in normal clothes almost impossible, and were helped out by explosions of white smoke been let off all around us. From then on, we needn’t have worried, as the atmosphere was just amazing. Our foreign friends got stuck into the dancing straight away, joined by Azerbaijanis having a wail of a time dancing with these foreigners with whom they couldn’t normally communicate. Turan was also once again a driving force behind the success of the party - brides are supposed to be shining Azerbaijani culture, waiting at their pedestal at the front of the hall until they are invited to dance by relatives later in the evening. True to form however, she wasn’t waiting around, and instead dived straight in. It was an electrifying, joyful night - I just remember feeling like everyone I hugged, shouted a conversation with or took a picture with was a long-lost friend - and I am sure this feeling wasn’t just due to the alcohol😂.
Our wedding came to an end, and it felt so good. The joy of the last few hours of celebrations and enjoying being around the people we love, mingled with the relief of having ‘completed it’. After a night in a hotel overlooking the bay, and a relaxing following day having a lazy brunch with our remaining friends which lasted until nearly dinner time because no one wanted to leave😅, we were saying goodbye to Turan’s family and heading to the airport to continue with our next adventure… the honeymoon!