Posted by Shira Savada, Real Weddings Editor
Remember yesterday's real wedding? The "esküvő" on the expansive Virginia property, with the yummy food and adorable kids? Well, when I was putting the gallery together, Sarah told me about all the ways she was honoring her mother through her dress and veils. So, I thought I'd show you an adorable photo of Sarah's mom, who celebrated her 40th anniversary the year of Sarah and Andras's wedding. Sarah had her mom's veil from 1968 incorporated into her own veil. Also, Sarah and Andras went over to Hungary the summer after their Virginia nuptials to have a wedding over there with more of the groom's family. And Sarah shared some cute photos with me, to share with you!
friends and family afterward is the “lakladom” or “lagzi.” The wedding in Hungary
was more of a lagzi, since Sarah and Andras had already said their vows and officially
wed back in Virginia. But for all of Andras’s family (except his parents, who
attended the American festivities), this was the wedding so it was treated as
such.
Andras spent his childhood summers with his grandmother on her land in Porva, the former royal hunting grounds of the king. It’s a humble little village but completely magical, and he always wanted to own a house there when he grew up. Just after he and Sarah met, he bought a tiny 200-year old house and some land next door to his grandmother’s farm overlooking the village landmark, a 400-year old chapel. The first time Sarah saw the remote village, she secretly dreamed of having her wedding there. But it would have been a logistical nightmare to get everyone to Hungary, so they decided to celebrate there six months after their Virginia wedding. Sarah let Andras do most of the planning this time around—but still used her expertise in food to develop the second wedding’s menu. Her only request? That they plan the celebration during the peak of Hungary’s famous cherry season, when the yards are bursting with sweet, black, and sour cherry trees.
Sarah and her young nieces climbed up in the cherry trees the night before the wedding to pick all the fruit themselves. A truly "sweet" memory for Sarah.
The couple arrived in Hungary a week early to open the little house they bought—where they’d host Sarah’s parents and the wedding party—for the first time. They spent the week restoring, painting, cleaning, building beds, and preparing the yard, which Sarah documented on her blog. That week, it rained every day leading up to the wedding, just like it had in Virginia; and like in Virginia, there was no back up plan, just trust that the rain would stop. On the morning of the Lagzi, the sky cleared completely. Andras’s two best friends built a long table and benches out of ash wood from a nearby forest. Andras’s mother arrived with buckets of roses from her yard, and Sarah’s family set to work creating the flower arrangements and setting the table as the food was being prepared.
The roses came from Andras's mother's prized rose gardens.
Guests walked over to the chapel to wait for the couple to arrive. Andras’s closest friend, Ricsi, wearing a traditional Hungarian shirt (with big bell sleeves) led Sarah and Andras through the village, followed by Sarah’s young nieces, down the path to the chapel. “It felt so old world to be a bride walking through my husband’s boyhood village and have all the local folks come to their yards to watch and wave as we walked toward our family and friends standing on the hillside outside the chapel,” Sarah says. The quiet ceremony in the chapel was mostly in Hungarian. The mood was quite tender since Andras’s dear grandmother had sadly passed just two days prior. Afterwards, Sarah got a piggyback ride through the fields of beets, potatoes, and onions that had been used for the day’s meal to a receiving line of guests.
As
is Hungarian tradition, there was no formal wedding cake. Instead,
every guest brought a dessert for the bride and groom, and each guest
was welcomed to take a different dessert home with them. Hungarian and
Transylvanian style cakes—including the beloved Hungarian Dobos Torta
from a famed coffee haus in Budapest—and many handmade favorites were
brought.
The evening ended later when the fires died down, and
a few pals pitched their tents and slept under the stars in the couple’s
backyard. Sarah's talking about the wedding's food and the land they grew it on over on her blog today.
From: Melesha | 1/8/10 at 1:13 pm
My husband was Hungarian and we incorporated several Hungarian traditions into our wedding including Hungarian food.