Thursday was a fairly uneventful day for us in Poland. That evening my parents arrived. They were just in time for a traditional element of any Polish wedding, the glass breaking ceremony. The ceremony consisted of all of us (everyone staying with the Plichta's) breaking bottles on the ground. Joanna, then, had the honor of cleaning up all of the broken glass while Matt watched. His job was to watch her clean it up to see if she would make a good wife.
Friday was the big day. The festivities began at 4pm in the historic church in Kartuzy. The church is shaped like a coffin and the monks that used to reside there slept in coffins. They did so as a reminder of their own mortality. A little creepy, but the church was beautiful. Unfortunately, like many of the sights in Europe, the front of the church was covered in scaffolding because it was being restored. This picture is the back side of the church, but you can sort of get an idea of what it looked like.
Matt and Joanna had a blessing in the church since they were already married. It lasted about a half hour and was completely in Polish. We took cues from those around us and stood when they did and bowed our heads when the priest did. The inside of the church was gorgeous--very ornate with lots of gilded wood and statues.
After the blessing we went to the reception. It was in a Greek restaurant just outside of Gdansk. There were about 100 guests present and they seated us at 2 very long tables. We settled in and prepared ourselves for a night of eating, drinking, and lots of dancing.
To say that we ate well would be an understatement. There was SO much food throughout the evening. The evening went kind of like this--platters piled high with food would be brought out to the tables, guests would gorge themselves in between taking shots of vodka from the bottles on the tables. Then the band would come on and people would dance. HARD. Dancing would last for about a half hour and then the whole cycle would start over again. The food and alcohol just kept coming and coming. American weddings are so tame (or boring some might say) compared to Polish weddings. EVERYONE danced, EVERYONE ate, and of course, EVERYONE drank.
Jack was such a trooper. He hung in there until nearly 10:00. Tom and I snuck out to the outside patio and were able to get him to fall asleep. We brought him back into the party and were able to successfully strap him into his carseat where he amazingly slept for a couple of hours. This was pretty incredible considering that there was a band playing and people constantly toasting and roasting the newlyweds. We (and most of the other guests) were very impressed with Jack.
Eventually, Jack was done with sleeping in a noisy room and it was time to call it a night. We were pretty proud of ourselves that he lasted until midnight. Tom and I had gotten a couple of hours to celebrate with everyone and do a little dancing. So, at midnight we headed in the cab for home. We were the first guests to leave and no one else showed signs of leaving any time soon. My parents lasted until 3am and Matt and Joanna finally rolled into the condo around 4:30am. What a party!
I couldn't resist capturing Jack's amazing feat on video. Check out the video below. When you see and hear what Jack slept through, I think you'll be impressed, too!
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