My Big, Fat Macedonian Wedding

Not even joblessness and poverty deter Macedonians from splurging on expensive parties. Guest lists of 500 are common, and families go into debt

By Ljubica Grozdanovska

Mare Davitkovska is planning for around 200 guests when her son is married later this month. It is a modest celebration by Macedonian standards, a country where elaborate and conspicuously costly weddings are a necessary luxury for many people.

"This caused a lot of problems because restaurants wouldn't hold such a small celebration, since most of them require a minimum of 250 guests," Davitkovska says.

Guest lists of 500 or more are common, and with restaurants charging 7 to 15 euros per person, the cost adds up quickly. Families go into debt for years to pay for them, although the investment may pay off over the long term — Macedonia has one of Europe's lowest divorce rates.

"We expect to cover half of the whole celebration from our savings, and the other half with a bank loan," says Davitkovska, whose son Branko is to be married on 27 June.

Davitkovska earns a monthly salary of around 300 euros, and her husband is unemployed. Even so, a bigger wedding party is a practical solution.

"If we don't do it, we'll be forced to have guests almost every night for a year maybe. Everybody will want to visit and congratulate us, so we'll always have to have something to eat, snacks and drinks. It will cost us much more," she explains.

Branko Davitkovski, 27, says he and his fiancée didn't want a traditionally large party.

"We planned to celebrate our marriage with lunch with our parents and our closest relatives and with a small party for our friends. But our parents insisted on a big wedding," he says.

A CHANCE TO FORGET

In addition to the cake, photographers, wedding dress, gold jewelry for the bride, and perhaps a limousine or even messages dropped from an airplane, many wedding planners have to budget for two further expenses.

The cost for the band, an essential part of any big party, ranges from 350 up to several thousand euros. Less expensive, but no less important to many Macedonians, is the fee for an Orthodox priest. The services of a single clergyman cost about 30 euros, but often three or five priests officiate at a church wedding. A civil marriage license, on the other hand, costs just 2.5 euros.

The habit of citizens of one of southeastern Europe's weakest economies to spend the equivalent of several years' salary for a party is not so contradictory as it may seem, says Aleksandra Filipovska, a sociologist from Skopje.

"It seems that they see these occasions as their one opportunity to forget about saving money and paying the bills, unlike most of the time," she says.

"Most parents are unable to cover the costs of a massive celebration, so they go to a bank. The loans they take out will be a burden for at least the next couple of years. But they live with the motto ‘you only live once,'" Filipovska says.

Nearly 30 percent of Macedonians live in poverty, according to UNICEF, and the country of 2 million suffers from a startling 35-percent unemployment rate. The quality of health care and education for children is eroding in Macedonia, creating conditions that a February UNICEF report calls "unacceptable.”"

But all linguistic and religious communities in the Macedonian ethnic mosaic aren't stingy when it comes to weddings, although there are no estimates of how many couples of the approximately 15,000 who marry each year have expensive wedding parties. Often, the expense is borne by a male "gastarbeiter" who returns home from Western Europe or North America to marry a local woman.

Marriage to a gastarbeiter brings higher status. At least, that's what Ajnet Mustafovska thinks. The 19-year-old from the city of Bitola is engaged to the son of an emigrant in Australia.