Who doesn't love to see a happy bride? Yesterday in Belgrade you could have seen 400 happy brides (and grooms) at the capital's 10th Collective Wedding Ceremony, a tradition started during the 1999 NATO bombing as a message to young people that love can triumph over hate. During the last 10 years, couples from Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Canada, the USA, Sweden, Denmark, and China have exchanged their vows together. If you're planning a wedding, you have time to sign up for next year! (Notice the gypsy trumpeters in the background. No wedding should be without a gypsy brass band; they're great.)Monday, May 5, 2008
"I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do......"
Who doesn't love to see a happy bride? Yesterday in Belgrade you could have seen 400 happy brides (and grooms) at the capital's 10th Collective Wedding Ceremony, a tradition started during the 1999 NATO bombing as a message to young people that love can triumph over hate. During the last 10 years, couples from Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Canada, the USA, Sweden, Denmark, and China have exchanged their vows together. If you're planning a wedding, you have time to sign up for next year! (Notice the gypsy trumpeters in the background. No wedding should be without a gypsy brass band; they're great.)
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IRIŠKI TELEVISION TOWER
The Iriški television tower stands on a forest area called Fruška Gora near Novi Sad. Yesterday my son's family and I went on a short ...
10 comments:
I love this. The crowd, the movement of it. The sideways tilt. It already had energy and you gave it more. And what a marvelous tradition with a marvelous message.
Hey, I'm Belgrade GF today!
What better way toward world peace than this? Wonderful tradition! And a brass band at your wedding ... a bonus! Fantastic photo today, Bibi!
Neat photograph of a happy day for a lot of people.
I never heard of this collective wedding ceremony before but it makes sense to me and look at the result. Wow.
Hi Bibi - To answer your question, "GF" is a joke from Paris Daily Photo. It means "Golden Finger." First one to comment on the day's photo wins the Golden Finger prize for being fast on the keyboard.
I was wondering what GF was! I thought it was "Got first" or something, but that made my inner grammar nerd twitch ;-)
I'll bookmark and add a link to this Blog in my Blog's sidepanel, and hopefully start reading regularly! I'd love to see more of Eastern Europe - I visited Riga and loved it there. I've been looking at getting tickets to see Counting Crows on their new tour, and saw they are playing Belgrade (same concert as Sting!). It's sold out, but I do admit to still being a little worried about visiting Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia. I think though, that it's mostly because much of my impressions come from the news and recollections of the time when war was going on - and I know that sometimes it takes a long time before peace establishes itself and settles down. My worries are because of a lack of knowledge, nothing more. I'm sure that reading this Blog and travel research would show me that not only are these beautiful countries to visit, but also safe. (In my defence, I'm a single female traveller - so I've not got friends or a partner who would be with me, if God forbid, anything did happen).
I'm just reading Peter Moore's book, "The Wrong Way Home", where he backpacked from London to Sydney through places like Prague, Croatia, Turkey, Serbia, Iran... and in 1998 I think, when war was active then - I can only imagine from his book, what it must have been like!
PHX-CDG reminded us the other day that "GF" began in the comments of Paris Daily Photo's January 25th post. For some reason I couldn't link to it, but it's easy to get to if you want to take a look. Funny conversation, moving into the next day's comments.
Wonderful photo and interesting post from your city. This is a excellent tradition with universal language, wedding.
Maybe one day I'll get to do what I keep thinking about - travel around Europe more. Avoid the big tourist spots like France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and concentrate more easterly, - I would love to see Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Herzegovina and further across, like Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine.
It's on my "One day..." list. But I'd certainly give you a shout - after 31 years, you must know Belgrade pretty well! Certainly the lesser known (but unmissable) places, and I'd get to know some of the real Serbia - fantastic!
What a great, lively photo! And what a beautiful bride.
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