There was a wedding in our hotel on our second night. It was our best chance to see more of the wedding. But we learned that the couple usually go to the justice of the peace (or their equal) to get married and then just have their party. The party was at our hotel. It went late into the night but our room was on the opposite side of the hotel from the party, so we were good.

Our first clue about the wedding came when we got back from a walk around the central area of Tashkent and found the musicians you see in the first photo. I was pretty sure they weren’t tooting about our arrival to the hotel.

The second photo is inside the hotel’s main lobby. People were very dressed up and we never saw a single person dressed casually.

I took the third and fourth photos from the hotel elevator, which had glass windows. I was several floors up when I took them and through the glass so they are not great photos. But in the third photo, you can see that they had a large central area for dancing. The wedding couple is on the stage at the top end of the dance area. The bride was carried in like a queen on a bed carried by many men. There were probably 200 guests with about half on each side of the dance floor. Musicians were both in place at the bottom while others strolled around and performed out on the dance floor. The music was good and loud.

The fourth photo is grainy but you can get an idea about how much food was piled on the tables. And this was just at the start of the meal. I have no idea how much more food they were served.

We were down on the ground floor for the last photo. There were multiple sets of dancers that performed on the dance floor, together with music and light shows. It was quite a celebration.