The girls’ and boys’ toys are similar to our wedding receptions. They occur on different days from each other. At around 7pm, guests start arriving at the toy hall and sit at tables where there is food waiting for them. Eventually the bride and groom arrive and take a seat of honor on a couch. Throughout the evening people dance, eat and make toasts. There are always professional photographers taking pictures and video. People go stand behind the couch and have their picture taken with the bride and groom. It lasts until about midnight or maybe later if you stay for the whole thing, though most people start to leave before then.
During the girls’ toy, the groom’s family presents the bride with gold jewelry and other gifts. This is part of the bride price. There is also a dance where the bride and groom dance and people give the bride money (usually American dollars). There is a cutting of the cake but the bride feeds a bite to surrounding people off her fork.
I’ve never been to a boys’ toy, but I think it’s similar. The difference between the two is who attends. The girls’ toy is for the bride’s co-workers and friends and extended family and the boys’ toy is for the groom’s. Only the immediate family and a few close friends attend both the girls’ and boys’ toy.
The kayjaybay is during the second day of festivities. The bride and groom go to the ministry with just a few close family and friends and sign their wedding license. Then they drive around the city, followed by other cars that honk at them. Their car is decorated with ribbons and scarves and things and there’s also a hired videographer riding in a car in front, taping it all. They stop at monuments and have their picture taken in front of them. Monuments in my city that they have their picture taken in front of include statues of Turkmenbashi and Magtymguly (a Turkmen poet) and the health walk. In the old days, the bride rode on a camel, but that has since been replaced by cars.
There are no formal invitations to a toy, just oral ones and you don’t have to be invited by the bride or groom. A distant classmate or friend who is going can invite you. So weddings are expensive because they pay for lots of people to eat. I’ve been to toys where I didn’t know the bride or groom, just someone who was going who invited me. Very few people use caterers. Instead women in the family make all the food ahead of time.
I’ve heard that in some regions of Turkmenistan it is still customary for the blood-stained wedding sheet to be produced to the family to prove the bride was still a virgin when she wed. I don’t think that happens in Balkanabat.
I did get to go to what would be the equivalent of a bridal shower for my site mate’s counterpart’s wedding. The women went to her house and ate food and gave her gifts, mostly mata. But they did do this cool thing that I later found out is actually a Russian tradition. The women wrote their names on the bottom of the shoes Gulayyam was going to wear for the wedding. They were writing in pencil, but Lindsay and I thought that was lame and really wanted to make our mark, so we used pen. Only later did we find out that the tradition states that if your name is worn off the shoe by the end of the wedding, you’ll get married soon. Guess Linds and I will be waiting awhile.