When I saw my friends later on, they would say to us, “what a beautiful wedding.” By American standards, it was pretty good.

My wife would remain silent when they made such comments. I would remain silent. From my wife’s Russian viewpoint, our wedding was a miserable failure.

My recommendation is to take your fiancé to an American wedding before you get married. I don’t care if you know the people well at the wedding or not. Crash a wedding if you have to.

My wife knew none of the customs here. She didn’t know where to shop. She had no friends to help her. I planned the wedding. I lined up the church, the reception hall, the priest, the music, the cake -- everything.

I asked my friends to cook roasts and turkeys and asked other guests to bring food like a potluck. They all came through for me big time. They set up the reception hall.

I had to help my wife order her wedding dress – so much for not seeing the bride before the wedding. We covered ten stores and one hundred miles to get her wedding shoes.

When we finally found a pair that she liked and that fit her, I was a little heavy handed about insisting on buying them. She wanted to keep looking for more shoes.

I was the bridegroom, the wedding planner, mother of the bride, all rolled into one.

I did the best job I could. My wife grudgingly acknowledges today that I did a pretty good job. However, she still holds it against me because it was not a proper Russian wedding.

Expectations have everything to do with happiness. If you expect one thing and get another, no matter how nice it is, you aren’t happy. My wife was expecting a proper Russian wedding and got a hybrid American wedding instead.

Many couples have two weddings – one in the West and one in the East. My wife and I had planned to do something similar, but by the time she made it back to Belarus, she was four months pregnant and didn’t fit into her wedding dress anymore.

Her family had a nice celebration for us to welcome us to the family instead. We also had the baby baptized in Belarus with a celebration to follow.

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