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ronin1
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| Joined: | Saturday January 21st, 2006 |
| Location: | S.F. Bay Area, California USA |
| Posts: | 620 |
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Posted: Sunday April 6th, 2008 11:36 pm |
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RW and Weddings...
So you navigated through all the hazards to get your fiancée a visa to visit you. Like the rock of Gibraltar, this is a major milestone in the process. It is time to celebrate and enjoy the moment… just for only a moment. So far, despite what you may think, you have just tested the waters and finished the low stress page of your journey. When your RW arrives, she will need TLC, understanding and infinite patience from you in order to cope and master her experiences in this first year ... and it will hit like a tsunami. If you are unprepared for this, you will get swept up and tumbled along with her.
So what is to prepare for? There are many things, all of which are important and require your time, effort and resources. One of the major ones is the wedding. Even if you’re expecting to have a moderate wedding, expect things to get a bit tense. I don’t mean the pre-wedding jitters.
To most all women, the wedding is a pivotal and defining moment of their life. A RW feels this no differently than any other woman, however there is a difference. Western women think and plan out their wedding in advance for years if not decades. There are a million decisions that have to be made from hundreds of millions of choices. All of this has been percolating in their minds since childhood. By the time they are proposed to, the tracks are already in place as to how the whole affair will run.
Not so for the RW. As with the efficiency of the communist system, there are but few choices for weddings. It’s like the Price is Right… select from three doors. Either a civil marriage or pay for the state wedding palace. All is predefined unless you want to have a church wedding. The point is that RW don’t spent enormous efforts in thinking about the wedding planning process when the choices before them are few and much of the details are out of their hands.
When a Russian Woman arrives in the States, they have little understanding as to the depth, detail, coordination, timeline and cost of an occasion that ordinarily is not though of in their homeland.
Consequently, the bulk of the decisions will be up to the groom who ordinarily has never given such things even a passing thought. Wedding details have always been the domain of the bride so the groom is typically clueless as to how to get this whole affair organized. Often, when the WM sees his RW fitting in so well in her new environment, he forgets that she may not know anything about what is expected of her in the planning phase let along the wedding itself. This is one of the first trials-by-fire that the new couple will face… and it’s a big one.
Everything seems to be in place so as to conspire in preventing the vows from being read. There is huge time, financial and family pressures. There is the ever present language barrier and constant mis-communications. Topping this are assumptions of culture and personal expectations.
It seems that Murphy’s Law tries to work on over-time in those short few months, however for those couples that are really committed to getting married; it makes the wedding even sweeter. Like Romeo and Juliet, nothing could keep them apart.
Ronin
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RQRose
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| Joined: | Monday October 27th, 2008 |
| Location: | Tampa, Florida USA |
| Posts: | 53 |
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Posted: Tuesday October 28th, 2008 06:55 pm |
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Would it be a good idea to have her parents at the American wedding? Or have a wedding in Russia And in America?
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ronin1
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| Joined: | Saturday January 21st, 2006 |
| Location: | S.F. Bay Area, California USA |
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Posted: Tuesday October 28th, 2008 08:32 pm |
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RQRose,
Yes, it would in both cases. However, it would be a cost and logistics problem.
Also, it would not be certain that the Russian parents or family would be able to get Visas for an American wedding. The Russian Embassy may restrict some government personnel or people who have sensitive government knowledge. Also, the Russian Embassy may look poorly in granting a group of a family to have active visas at the same time for fear of them never returning to Russia. This maybe especially true if the fmily has no track record of visiting foreign countries.
Remember, unlike America, Russians work for the Russian government and are in a sense Russian assets. They don't want to lose them.
Regardless, being able to swing a Russian and American wedding with all parents and family would indeed be ideal.
Ronin
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RQRose
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| Joined: | Monday October 27th, 2008 |
| Location: | Tampa, Florida USA |
| Posts: | 53 |
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Posted: Tuesday October 28th, 2008 08:52 pm |
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Thanks for the AMAZING website. It's VERY informative!!!
HA! You know it's funny when you think about it. Americans in a sense ALSO are assets of America, and when we go to another country we STILL are assets to America. You register your travel plans, and now they track your passport, CCs expenditures, ect. It's just that America looks at things from a different perspective.
They see expats as 'exporting American culture' and having talked to American TEFL teachers, any money you bring back to America, they STILL tax you on, SS, Medicaid, Ect. I think it's a reduced rate though...
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