FREEFORUM

I am a tamada. Two hundred weddings, Talas and around. People always ask me what a toi costs, so let us be honest here where nobody sees our faces.

A "small" Talas wedding this summer:
- hall: 6,000 som
- food for 300: 14,000
- singer: 2,500
- me (I am cheap): 1,500
- video man: 1,200
- cars: 800
- gifts to the kuda: do not ask

Around 30,000 before the gifts. A normal salary in this city is maybe 1,800 a month. Do the arithmetic, then have another glass.

Toronto: my brother's wedding in a church hall, 140 people, and my mother still cried that it was "like a funeral, so few people". My aunt's side wanted to fly half of Kara-Buura over. Compromise: the village watched on Skype, frozen on my uncle's face for forty minutes. They said it was a beautiful wedding.

An important thread. I will say what I said at our IAA meeting: the wedding should not cost more than the marriage can carry.

My own toi, Talas, 1979: 220 people, two sheep, and my father-in-law's records for the dancing. The records were the most expensive part. He never got them back.

toi_tamada, may I send you a feedback form for the profession? I have a draft ready.

Uncle, please. My profession has never received feedback. Only complaints.

You want to know who profits? The banquet halls on the central avenue. And who got the plots on the central avenue? Ask the city council. They are too scared to ask themselves. Every toi in Talas pays rent to ONE FAMILY. Get married in a yurt. WAKE UP IRAD

Koryo weddings have a whole extra table for the Korean side. Kimchi, salads, the "other" laghman. My mother calls it the embassy. Price of the embassy: two aunties not speaking for a year.

Season report. Avenue halls now 8,000 for a Saturday. New trend: the "Amerikanka toi". White tent on a lawn, a DJ, and a cake taller than the groom. The aksakals sit at the edge looking at the cake like it is a foreign army.

Semiz weddings: Mass at St. Yusup, then the toi with a mariachi AND a komuz player. they take turns. by midnight they play together and nobody knows what song it is. cost: my tío sold a truck

I did one in Semiz last year. Best toi of my career. The komuz man and the trumpet man are friends now. I think they have a band.

A note from the church side: the crowning itself (burakha) costs nothing. Rings, cup, garlands, bread. Nobody in the sanctuary asks about the hall. Everything you pay for is the toi, not the sacrament. Our old rector used to say: "The sacrament is free. The sheep is not."

Nurzhan Russo version: registry office, photos on the steps of the Palace of Metallurgists, banquet, 80 people, done in one day. My Iradi coworkers think we are barbarians. We think they are bankrupt.

Both correct.

Since the new law I hear more families in Kara-Buura say: we will do a proper toi, everything open, everyone sees the bride came of her own will. The big toi has become a kind of proof. Strange thing to be grateful for. I am.

I can confirm something from the job. This spring two families asked me to put the bride's "yes" into the program. Out loud, on the microphone. I have done it twice now. Both times the hall went quiet, the good kind of quiet.

Five-year update for the thread: average Talas toi this summer about 45,000 som. Bread is still around one and a half. Weddings are the only thing in Irad with honest inflation statistics, and I am the statistics office.