Ask anyone how their wedding was and they say “amazing,” which is the word we all reach for when the truth is too large and a little embarrassing to say out loud in a group chat. So I have been sorting through mine like a drawer of jewellery, trying to find the pieces I would actually wear again, seta ting the necklaces and truly understanding what just really happened. Turns out there are five. Five moments that i keep going back to because they are just so special and what no romantic movie could have prepared me for. Here they are, in no particular order, except that the order is completely deliberate and I stand by it.

Before anyone official arrived, before the day belonged to everyone else, it belonged to us. We did our own first look and I nearly went down. We danced. We were being slowly cooked alive in the heat, sweating through fabric that cost more than my first car, and not one of us cared. We drank rakija out of wine glasses because we did not have shot glasses, which is the most Balkan sentence I have ever written, and somehow it made the rakija feel more ceremonial, like communion but stronger and much funnier. Loved seeing my foreign friends squint as they drank it. Then I handed each of them flowers and told them, to their faces, why they matter to me. We cried. Even my friends who struggle at showing emotion cried. Choosing them was the best decision of the wedding.

We are a family scattered across borders, so we do not get many afternoons in the same room, let alone the same country. To see my mother, sister and father in one place, dressed beautifully, looking at me like that, would have been worth the entire budget on its own. I could have served gas station sandwiches and the books would still have balanced. Please do not repeat that to the caterer. The food was delicious, but the moment itself was so wholesome and so so important to me.

It was forecast to storm. Not one cloud showed up, which felt less like luck and more like a decision made somewhere above the guest list. I find the people I have lost in odd places now: in the shape of a cloud, in a bug that lands on my hand and refuses to leave, in a shift in the weather, in a voice. On the day, I heard my grandmother. I took one minute for myself, only one, to think about every person who built me before I knew I was being built, the ones who did the shaping without ever asking for credit, who nudged me toward the love I eventually found. I did not cry that time. I said thank you into the air and hoped it traveled. No scrap that I knew they heard me, they were all there on that day with me. I was happy to know my grandma saw my bouquet and saw her favourite flower. She was there.

He cried. I had spent hours on that glam and I watched it flash before my eyes, and then I cried too and quickly dried my tears with electric fan. My father is a Balkan man of the classic model, which is to say his emotional range usually runs somewhere between “stoic” and “more stoic.” On this day he was warm and fuzzy and completely disarmed, the sweetest man I have ever met. He is the one who loved me first. I would do the whole wedding over again, dress, heat, seating chart and all, just to get those ninety seconds back. I feel like I have to split this one between my both parents, because my mum did the most beautiful speech I have ever heard. Brought me back to my childhood and times I used to go to school but forgot my backpack. She described me as a dreamer, someone who was always lost in books and drawings, I guess I never even admitted that before, but felt so comfortable sharing anecdotes with my guest.

Right after our first dance I looked up and scanned the room out of habit, the way you check whether people are actually having a good time or just being polite about it. Not a single chair was occupied. Everyone was on their feet, dancing, singing, sweating, alive. No courtesy clapping, no phones, no one hovering near the doors doing quiet math on their babysitter. Just a room full of people I love, collectively refusing to sit. I will keep that picture for the rest of my life, and I will pull it out on the grey days when I need proof that the good ones are real.

People keep asking what I would change about the weekend. If you would like to read the story you can check it out on my Substack.

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