Three Weddings at Foro's

Three Weddings at Foro's

Foros church
Friday October 30, 2009

After leaving Kiev, I haven’t had a lot of luck with museums. The special art museum in the forest of Parhomovka was closed (we were there on a Monday which seems to be the universal closing date). The miniature museum in Kharkov was being repainted so we couldn’t go inside. The War museum in Sevastopol was closed so we just circled around the building to see the outside exhibits. That was three strike-outs.
Driving from Sevastopol to Yalta, you pass through the Bardarsky gate which is the summit of the hills on the Crimea. There is a restaurant there, some outdoor vendors, and a lookout. My guide told me not to look down until we reached the top. Of course that makes it doubly hard not to do something when you are asked not to do it but I managed and I was justly rewarded. The view is just incredible. Stretched out in front of you is the Black Sea, the cliffs and hills of the Crimea Peninsula and below is this lovely little church, Foro’s, sitting on a cliff in the bend of the road and above a picturesque village. Snapshot after snapshot later, we drove down to the church.

View of Foro's Church from Bardaysky Gate
Here I got lucky, as we walked into the very small church, there was a wedding ceremony being performed. The priest was maybe halfway through the service and three couples were standing in front of him getting married. I had dutifully put away my camera before walking into the church but I saw relatives and friends snapping away so I pulled out my camera again and recorded the event to a small degree.
There were singers above us and actually I never saw them but the priest would chant and the singers would swell their voices in response. The couples were lined up in front of him on the shawls that are made in the region and so often draped over pictures of saints. Each person had a candle they were holding and each one was wearing a crown. Shortly after we arrived, the priest went to each couple and bound their free hand together with another shawl. Then he walked them around the center altar three times.

Three Weddings
They go back to their original positions and then there is more chanting and singing then the priest undoes the hand binding and the assistant takes away the shawls. Next the priest and assistant takes the crowns off of each person and finally the couples put their candles together and blow them out.
Next the couples go to the front of the church to where the icon stand is located and the door to the inner sanctum of the priest is open so that we can all see inside to the altar in this section of the church. It is quite golden and glowing in there with a picture of Jesus over the altar. The couples are blessed with the priest’s heavy cross and they each kiss it. Then they turn around and face all of the people in the church – of which there weren’t many. Including my guide and me, there were only about 15 other people in the church besides the three couples.

Three Weddings in the church
The couples are presented with the shawl that bound their hands together and they each get a picture of Jesus and Mary and the priest signs their wedding license and they get that. There are huge smiles all around. The priest leads them back around the center altar, the assistant closes the doors to the inner sanctum, and the bells start ringing. They are quite deafening inside that small space. My ears were ringing as the priest leads the three couples outside and their few friends and relatives follow and throw rice and coins on them with great enthusiasm.
That was my Orthodox wedding experience in the Crimea at an ancient church (rebuilt of course since WWII when it was destroyed). So three strikes on the museums but then an even luckier happenstance, so witness an Orthodox wedding of three couples, in a tiny church on a cliff side in Yalta. Wow, traveling is fantastic.

dome inside Foro's church