The 50s in Georgia

My stepfather once told me: “I understand why you want to go back to Georgia. It is like 50s in the states”. Now, he meant the good stuff about the 50s: family values, small grocery stores, neighbors being friends, sense of community.

As Giga and I got obsessed with the AMC’s series Mad Men, we both realized how true that is. It is the 50’s here, not only with all the good, but the crappy stuff too. For some reason, it makes me very glad that before the 70s, American people behaved much like Georgians do today: smoked all day, drank at work, objectified women, fired homosexuals from work, threw garbage in the park, had pretty housewives and promiscuous husbands. I was glad because: 1. aha, they had flaws too! 2. If they could change, we can change.

There is one thing in the 50s (or at least in Mad Men) that is unquestionably better than it is today: style! This is why Giga and me decided to have a 50s theme for our second wedding…wait what?!

As you know (or not), Georgian weddings have three parts: a church ceremony, a legal ceremony and a restaurant. 3 years ago, we didn’t have time, nor did we feel compelled to perform a legal ceremony and sign a marriage license. We just did the church thing, where Giga almost set the priest on fire and my maid of honor fainted in the middle of the bible-reading. Oh, and the drinking-eating-Georgian dances-drinking-eating-Georgian dances thing.

Now that we are thinking of producing little Gigas and Pasumonoks (this is where you go awwwwwwwwwwwwww), we decided to put our names on that paper.

We already had the restaurant and all that Georgian wedding festivity, so we came up with an inexpensive, American wedding: lots of flowers and no food. We even used paper plates!!! We did have alcohol though. Wine—not Georgian! As mentioned, for the first time in Georgia (to my knowledge), we also had a theme and kudos to my girlfriends, most of them showed up with 50s hair and dresses.

You can compare the pics from our first (real) wedding to this thing. Changes are apparent. That is the same man by my side, though.

And you know what? If we are half a century behind, we should at least have fun with it! Down with Justin Beiber, I want Marilyn Monroe!

P.S. and get this, we also had a second honeymoon! This time something exiting, not Borjomi, that we did the first time. Wait for the Istanbul in the next post.