From Russia - with Love

I will say that probably the most exciting thing I saw in Russia was all the wedding hoopla!  Apparently, they have a tradition to have their photos taken in front of very famous and or scenic sites around the city.  We first 
encountered this in St Petersburg and saw photo sessions, sometimes with the whole wedding party, every day we were there. Russians like to go all out!




They rent ridiculously long limousines, which are decorated for the event with fake flowers and large wedding bands.  In St Petersburg we even saw some boats rented for the occasion.  Often the maid of honor wears a red sash and the best man a blue one.  Sometimes,  passerbys will sing to the happy couple and the groom must give them some coins to make them stop. What are they saying?  Ask somebody who speaks Russian...


 We saw brides posing in front of the Winter Palace, Red Square, GUM (a very high end shopping complex in Moscow) and I do mean posing!  It was like a Vogue cover shoot.

Another custom is to have a special lock with the bride and groom's initials and the date of the happy event.  These tokens of their eternal love are then locked onto the railing of beautiful bridge in St Petersburg or a bridge with metal trees put there for this very purpose in Moscow. To make room for new ones theses are periodically cut off and disposed of to make room for new ones!

And then there are the dresses!  Wow! the bigger the better. A little bit over the top, but I think Russian brides like that. We were told that many of these customs are old ones that have been revived since the fall of communism. And sadly, despite their love of wedding pomp,  the divorce rate in Russia is very high.