As a person who has a hard time managing to keep in touch despite loving human interaction (it sounds insane, I know), I am very grateful to my friends, who acknowledge this feature of mine, accept it, and manage to stay friends. Having lived in more than one place, I have made friends in many countries and sadly these friendships are cursed with long distance and my poor skills at decently keeping in touch. Yet, even in such circumstances, some of them do last. That one Skype conversation a year is really all it takes, and when we get to meet in person it’s always fantastic. So on my yearly Skype call with the friend this post is about I got the news that she got engaged and last week I flew to Poland for her wedding.
If I had to say the name of one person in the world that I perceive as the most similar to me I’d say Ola. Ola is a combination of honest generosity, graceful goofiness and translation nerdiness – all attributes I completely identify with myself. I met her when I was living in Poland, in the same office where I also met the love of my life. In fact, she was one of the first people to know about me finding love. She found her perfect man a few months later.
She married him twice. The first time in Moldova, his home country. The second time in Poland, her land. I generally don’t need a reason to visit Poland, my second home, but this time I actually had one. Although I was not the designated photographer, I just couldn’t leave my camera at home, so I attended the wedding wearing an elegant dress and high heels paired up with my bulky camera bag. It’s the graceful goofiness sisterhood, after all. 
I adored her choice to wear a headdress made of fresh wild flowers, and have a matching bouquet. This is one of my favourite Polish traditions: wearing flowers on the head for special occasions. For my First Communion I wore a white flower tiara, a small touch of Polish tradition on that important event.
As every Polish wedding demands, there has been a lot of food, and a lot of dancing. Being an international wedding, Polish vodka shared the table with Moldovan wine. Since neither my boyfriend nor I are big dancers, I mostly took to the dancefloor with my camera, capturing my friend having a blast on her special day.
Of course I also had a lot of food. At some point I gave up photographing all of it, but did not give up eating and had my last serving of soup – żurek – after 1:00 am.
Food was served even after the cake. The wedding cake had been served on the roof terrace, after a quick rain shower made the outside temperature drop a few degrees. I took this candid shot of the happy couple looking happy next to their wedding cake and I am in love with it.
There was a Polaroid camera by the guest book, so guests could attach a picture of themselves to the page with their wishes. On the card we handed them I had written my best wishes in Polish. We chose to use Italian on the guest book, which already featured a lot of Polish, along with Romanian and English, just to keep it even more international.
On the way back from the venue, the first thing the taxi driver asked me was if the photos had turned out good. I guess my camera bag really gave me away easily. He then pointed out I was leaving quite late for a photographer, so I explained I was mostly a guest, but I also took some photos since, well, I take photos. I had long given up my heels and was rocking my flats, but my big dress was still in place, definitely not something I would wear if I was working. Funny enough, it looked as an absolutely appropriate attire for a wedding photographer to him. I guess one is never too wrong when it comes to dressing up.
Hej-Hej! Love the pictures! Just wanted to let you know, I hope all is going well! I miss you. It is really going to be hard not seeing you at school. We should meet up for fika when I am back in Falun! I am in the states but fly back around Jul 22. Love your blogs and pictures. Take care!
Hey Mitzi!! So nice to hear from you! I hope you are having a great time in the States. I miss you, too, and will miss you and everyone else even more after the summer. Definitely want to meet you up for fika, but perhaps September will be a better option as between the end of July and the end of August my parents are here and then I fly to Italy. We’ll keep in touch. I saw that you had started a blog. Give it a chance, would love to read it!
oh it looked like an amazing wedding! you managed to capture great moments of their special day 🙂
Thank you! It was so cozy and they were so sweet and happy it was a pleasure to be there. I’m hapy my pictures managed to capture that. I have another wedding next month, looking forward to that one, too!
Pingback: A hipster taste of Krakow - Electric Blue Food
Such an elegant and simple wedding! I loved the bride’s flower crown !
Me too, it’s a very typical Polish thing to wear flowers on the head, and I loved it that she embraced this tradition.
Thank you for stopping by, Paroma!
I relate to you regarding friends, mine are also around the world! Thank you for sharing your friend’s wedding, looks like you had a good time. It’s amazing how different weddings are in each culture!
Thank you Lucy! The older I get and the more I appreciate all the cultural relevance of wedding celebrations, beyond just celebrating the love. I think there’s much more to it, and I don’t mean that the love factor is not important, but there are so many elements that make weddings great experiences.
What beautiful photos you took ….you have created such a mesmerising mood. Looks like a beautiful wedding
Thank you! I am glad I got to experience this, it was a really beautiful day!
I love the photos and I’m sure your friend loved them too. It reminded me of my wedding and how much effort my best friend put into making sure that she was there. She even bunked a couple of important exams. That’s friendship for you!
Aww that’s sweet what she did. And thanks for stopping by and enjoying my photos, it was very important to me to capture that day on good photos!
Loved reading this, I’ll be marrying my Polish fiance next year so looking for inspiration on how to incorporate Polish wedding traditions – all we know is that there will be loads of Vodka!
Hi Bridget! I’m so glad you enjoyed this post and I’m sure your wedding will be lovely. Vodka is definitely a good starting point, and I’d recommend a flower headdress, too 🙂
So fun! Your friends look happy and beautiful. My daughter just spent 3 weeks in Poland to visit her boyfriend. She went to his brother’s wedding while she was there and said it was so fun and the reception was 3 days long. She loves Poland. After listening to all of her stories, I want to go very much as well.
Hi Kathleen! Wow, I have never been to one that lasts so many days, but I know that some very traditional ones do. I would never last that long, I need to sleep at some point 😀 Poland is a very nice country, with many interesting things to discover there, so I hope you’ll get a chance to visit someday.
This is so beautiful. Making friends around the world is always so special and I’m glad you went to her wedding. I’m planning a similar thing next year, two and maybe three weddings, Alaska, Australia and India, it’s so great to see cultures come together over love.
Best wishes to your happy friends!
Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful to see how no matter where you are from, we all celebrate love. It’s beautiful. And it’s a great excuse to travel and see a special side of a place when you get to participate in such a thing as a wedding.
I will pass on your wishes to my friends 😉
The pictures are very beautiful, I love the flower crown ! It brings me back memories about my own wedding, great read 🙂
Thank you for stopping by, Alice! I’m glad you enjoyed my article and it brought back good memories 😉
Pingback: The best view in Warsaw - Electric Blue Food
So good to see a beautiful couple like this. The camera person seemed like a total profession covering all the little aspects of this beautiful wedding. I love the headband the bride’s wearing and that’s quite in contrast with the groom’s suit. Such a pretty couple and overall a really beautiful wedding.
Thank you, as the camera person I’m glad you liked the details I captured. I was totally in love with the headdress when I saw her!