In a remote region in northern Romania there is a remarkable mix of tradition and wealth. The residents of the Oaș region have been working in the west for years so that they can build magnificent houses and drive expensive cars at home. Dressed in the latest Parisian fashion and old folk costumes, they host opulent weddings worth tens of thousands of pounds, where guests dance between dry ice and eat selected delicacies, all captured by a team of photographers.
They work 11 months a year in Western Europe, but in mid-August they return to their home villages in the hills of Northern Romania near the border with Hungary and Ukraine. “They work hard all year round, they save money, they don’t go on vacation, but they want to show off at home,” says Claudiu Bud. He has worked in Spain and England but has returned home to run the Enigma Bar in Negreşti-Oaş, the capital of the region of 12,000 people. “The people here have always been hardworking and able to make money,” he says, surrounded by bottles of expensive single malt whiskeys.
Hundreds, sometimes 1000, of people attend weddings in Oaș, and it is important that no expense be spared. Stretch limousines are fully booked and commute between the villages; Beauticians and hairdressers in beauty salons work to the point of exhaustion; and it is believed that cooks sleep by their stoves and stoves, flower shops make endless bouquets, and musicians play until dawn every night. Everything has to be the best so that guests leave satisfied. And I was one of them.
wedding insanity
Maria Cont cuts off a piece of yellow butter that has become nice and soft in the midday sun and rubs it carefully into Andreea Avram’s hair. Preparations for her wedding with Florian Mois begin, accompanied by the wild cadences of Romanian folk songs. It takes four hours to braid her traditional hairstyle. Tomorrow Avram will be seated on a dais at the head of a long table and the eyes of 400 guests will be on her. Weddings in the Oaș region of Romania are serious business and usually take place twice. “This year we’re going to have a traditional wedding in folk costumes, but next year we’re going to have a modern wedding that will be attended by a lot more people,” says Avram.
Maria Cont enjoys a special status in the village of Racsa. “I learned how to prepare brides from my mother and grandmother and nobody else knows how to do it,” she says as she braids strands of hair into elephant ears. She also owns accessories like dozens of strings with multicolored beads, a fake bun, and ornate ribbons that are later sewn onto the hairstyle. “How is she going to sleep so that she doesn’t damage this little work of art?” I wonder, and Avram’s mother laughs, “She has to come up with something, it’s her first wedding.”
The house of the Conts is perched on a hill overlooking the village, and behind the trees there is a breathtaking view of what appears to be all of Oaș all the way to the hills that mark the Ukrainian border.
-
Women in traditional costumes watch a wedding ceremony in a Romanian Orthodox church in the village of Tur. At the end of August and beginning of September, the region is gripped by the wedding craze and if you drive through its villages, you will meet a wedding in no time
Where does the wealth of the locals come from? “Even in communist times, they drove to the south of the country in summer to do seasonal farm work or to paint high-voltage towers. They cut deep forests that had to give way to fields when the communist dictator Ceaușescu wanted to make Romania the breadbasket of Europe. As soon as communism fell, they went west to work, ”says Bud in his Enigma bar.
At first they might not speak any foreign languages, but they didn’t mind working from morning to night and doing jobs that make other people turn up their noses. They slept in abandoned houses or crammed into miniature apartments in the worst neighborhoods and saved. Some became successful and started their own businesses. When they had saved enough money, they started building houses at home in their villages that are more like palaces, but where no one lives for most of the year. They are constantly being rebuilt and improved. There is a saying in Oaș: “If my neighbor builds a three-story house, mine must have four.”
On the country roads in Oaș you can find Porsche, Maserati or Mercedes in a number that even in the rich districts of Munich or London overshadows. I often see a young man or woman at the wheel with a new driver’s license, if they have one at all. “This is the latest trend, they have started to compete over who can buy their children the most powerful and most expensive car,” says Bud, shaking his head.
An intricate hairstyle is slowly growing on Avram’s head. Her bridesmaids, dressed in folk costumes, have come to support her. One of them, 15-year-old Denisa Lup, is watching what will happen one day. Her parents have worked in England for 20 years and because they were too busy to look after her she lived with her grandfather until the age of 10. In this year’s summer vacation she has already attended 15 weddings and next year she will be invited to at least 20.
-
Andreea Avram, dressed in traditional bridal costume, which can weigh up to 20 kg, in front of her family’s house in the village of Racsa
Remus Tiplea is a renowned money changer in Oaș and reaps a stroke of luck in the summer thanks to the workers returning from abroad and their conspicuous expenses. He started taking photos in 2009 and has already published several books on traditions and rituals in Oaș.
“Today’s wedding in the village of Camarzana will be pretty big, for about a thousand people,” he tries to prepare me for the spectacle. But such an event is far more than a photographer could handle, and so we set off in a convoy of cars – the small team, led by Tiplea, consists of two videographers and one other photographer. Two or three hundred people are invited to an average wedding in Oaș, more than 1,500 large ones.
In Camarzana, everything is prepared for the arrival of the wedding guests in the courtyard of the groom’s parents’ house. Two bands are invited – traditional gypsies with guitar and violin and a singer with a small band. Rows of champagne glasses are on the table, and the champagne is cooled in a refrigerator truck parked on the street. The glasses are hand-painted with the names of the wedding guests and the glasses for the bride and groom are held in an embrace, relatively true to the original.
No sooner have they started bringing out plates of delicacies than we are on our way to the bride’s house. I look back wistfully at the meatballs, mini schnitzel, roulades and salamis, but it doesn’t get far: The bridal couple Jesica Monica Bura and Grigore Hop-Hotcas grew up almost in sight of each other.
The bride’s family is not to be embarrassed either, and here, too, the tables groan under various goodies – but one thing is different with the tables in the groom’s house. “Note that there is no alcohol here,” says Claudia Simon, a videographer. “The bride’s family belongs to the Pentecostal movement, while the groom’s family is Orthodox.” But religious differences are not a problem either – the wedding takes place in the Orthodox church that towers over the village.
Simon comes from Zalau, about 160 km away. “In a year I shoot about 30 weddings, but here in Oaș I do two at most – I don’t think I could survive any more. Elsewhere in Romania people are happy when the wedding is reduced to a short film, but in Oaș we make about five-hour films for them. ”
Everything has to be meticulously recorded. A small flower background was set up in the garden, where the bride can be photographed with everyone. When there are no more people to take photos, Tiplea, his team and I finally attack the delicacies, but after the first bite we are called into the house. There is another wedding dress in the corner of the living room, and the bride and her bridesmaids in robes specially made for the wedding are already romping around with balloons in the bedroom. The scene was carefully staged for the sole benefit of the photographers and videographers.
In her exaggerated wedding dress, the bride returns to the garden to have another photo taken with everyone. Simon estimates that this dress cost around 5,000 euros. The wedding guests present envelopes with gifts. “The average wedding costs around 50,000 euros, but every guest has to bring a present from their family,” says Tiplea later. The amount depends on how well you know the bride and groom. “The amount collected is always higher than the wedding costs.”
We join the procession to the groom’s house, where a brief civil ceremony follows. In the courtyard there is more dancing in a circle, and soon there will be a small procession to the church.
After the wedding, when it is almost dark, we drive to the wedding hall on the outskirts of Camarzana. The hall is so big that you can hardly see from one end to the other. The bride and groom are already dancing and the singer gives everything in a romantic song. “It’s going to be a long night,” says Tiplea. At his last wedding, he didn’t finish taking pictures until 6 a.m.
Over the course of seven days, I attended six weddings in Oaș. I’m exhausted and can’t imagine going 20 in a couple of weeks and then returning to Paris or London rested to work on construction sites all year round.
“You have to expect at least an hour to wait at the border,” says Tiplea, who has come to say goodbye. “Everyone goes and we will have peace again. 70 percent of the locals work abroad. Most of the year you don’t even have someone to talk to here. “
