2019: 61 weddings. 2020: 4. The rest: nothing, or a card by post.
Things I sold this year: the second speaker, one microphone, my dinner jacket (no, I just put it in the cupboard). Things I learned: how to make a decent pilaf for my family. And how to cut hair, from my wife.
I am keeping the tie.
No hall, no band, no horse. A yard, a rented tent, a table made of two doors, 15 guests, masks in the pockets. The bride's father roasted a sheep in a pit, the groom's mother brought bread, and they asked me to be "a normal host, with a microphone". I used the microphone, with no speaker, in a courtyard where my voice came back from the wall.
It was the most beautiful toi I did this year. I did four this year.
The tent in the yard, with the apricot tree behind. Two doors for a table.Schools closed on Thursday. Today the first call: a hall in Semiz, a Saturday in April, 200 guests, "can we move it to June?" Then five calls more. By evening I had no weddings until June, and then not even in June.
The halls refuse to return deposits and cry. The couples cry. My wife looks at me with the look of someone who has married a host.
I am not sad. I am something else. A host without people.
For young hosts (I am old now, 40):
- "The professor, the driller and the herder met at a well." Everybody knows it, everybody waits, the herder wins. Every time.
- "A father tells the groom: take care of my daughter. The groom: and who takes care of me? The father: now you ask the right question."
- Any joke about the Wi-Fi in the hall. Wi-Fi is the new weather.
The jokes that do not work: anything about politics, anything about the bride's family, anything about the price of the toi.
Since the Tulpar app came out, everybody photographs the cake and posts it into Tulpar Talas. The bride's cake was seen by 3,000 people before the bride saw it. There was a comment under it: "too many roses". The bride read it at the table and went white.
My new rule: no phones until the first toast. Nobody listens to me, but they hold the phone lower.