Casamiento Magui y Pato

The Civil Ceremony

Unlike Caro & Santi’s wedding that had both the civil (legal) ceremony and church wedding back-to-back on the same day, Magui & Pato have their ceremonies on separate days – mainly due to availability of venues due to the backlog of weddings caused by the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Buenos Aires was second only to Melbourne when it came to number of days the population was forced into government instated lockdown. Not a great statistic, and I’m not here to discuss this, so let’s move on quickly.

It’s Friday 18th March and we’ve arrived at 10:10am at the same government office that only 2 weeks beforehand we were at for Caro & Santi’s wedding. (I only recognised the place when we arrived – I am super sm_rt). It was once again raining for an Echagüe wedding – there hasn’t been a dry one yet in Argentina. Santi in his haste to get to the civil office on time, realised half way there on the freeway that he had left his DNI (national identity card) at home. It was 100% necessary he had this for his brothers wedding to be formalised in the eyes of the law as he was a nominated witness for the legal paperwork. Not the best day to do this as the rain also made traffic a nightmare. The official wedding appointment time was 10:18am, somehow he arrived at 10:20am. Luckily this time things are running behind schedule. Agus – “You had one job Santi!”

We are all allowed into the building this time unlike with Caro & Santi’s ceremony. COVID rules have changed again, so after waiting in the outside doorway we did a quick switch-a-roo with the other wedding party who were exiting for photos, we moved inside to the hallway, waited for a bit, then piled into the room once the door was opened. The government official starts yelling something at us all about vaccinations and Agus tells me to get my certificate out to show her – it’s on my iPhone so this was a simple task. Then everyone is rushed into sitting down to show that we fit in the room (apparently no standing allowed)…I’m still holding my iPhone with the vax. certificate at the ready. The official is the Justice of the Peace & she begins the ceremony. I eventually put my phone away in my pocket…everyone else seems to have already put their vax. cards away, I’m hoping people haven’t noticed me holding out to show mine to someone. It is bright green after all with a bright yellow Australian coat of arms on it – surely nobody has seen this, Agus has and tells me to put it away. I later found out that the JP said something to the effect of “bugger it, forget about the vaccination certificates” before she kicked things off.

There are a few words spoken, Magui & Pato stand at the front of the room in front of the JP who is seated at a desk. They sign some paperwork, Santi and Magui’s sister Melina also sign as witnesses. National Identity cards (DNI) are checked, the official says something and leaves into the back offices closing the door behind her. I don’t know what was said, but I am guessing that this was the legal part of the ceremony and now she is going to get the official stamp of approval and apply it to the paperwork. I can only presume that there is an actual physical official stamp & that it is probably locked away in some safe back there that she as the anointed official has access to. At this point, Alfie is done with sitting – he’s been pretty good so far as we had given him the iPad to watch. He is bored doing adult things (and he’s had his fair share this trip to be fair) so he’s sitting in the corner telling everyone that he has a hole in his jeans.

The JP is back, she sits at the desk and the ceremony is restarted, everyone is quiet except for Alfie – he wants to sit next to tia Nana. She announces that what she has read was what was required legally for her to say, but then adds that a marriage also needs love (nice ad-libbing there JP). And just like that Magui y Pato se casan! Pato, now tearing up hugs Magui – it’s just like a Foxtel Romance HD movie. We all pose for a bunch of photos in the room and then head outside for what is Trombetta’s favourite activity – throwing things at people, in this case rice at the newly married couple. Alfie is also very keen to do this and Trombetta has been wording him up on the best throwing technique – Agus quickly corrects this to a gentle lob when the action starts instead of a baseball throw.

A Family Reception

Pato passes Agus a wallet full of cash and asks her to pickup the food from a store called Vicente Lopez (in the suburb of the same name) that he has organised for the reception at their place. He chose to get his car cleaned this morning at 7am instead of picking this up himself – it was dirty apparently…probably nobody would have noticed in all of this rain. Anyway it’s probably a good thing we are going there is Alfie is hungry and has been asking for food since about 1/2 way through the ceremony and we forgot to pack snacks in his backpack – we’ve stuffed up well and truly here! We pile into Silvi’s spaceship (it’s not a car daddy, it’s a spaceship and we’re going to the moon) after wrangling Alfie in rain – he just wants to jump in puddles, be carried, hold the umbrella etc. Thankfully it’s not a long drive to the store and their apartment complex is only across the road. We circle the block whilst Agus goes inside to pickup the order, we collect her on our first loop back and we’re off. Then whilst at the traffic light, we see Pato under his umbrella on the sidewalk, it takes a couple of loud yells from Trombetta to get his intention as he is striding with purpose. He was trying to get hold of Agus to get his house keys from her that he gave her after the wedding ceremony. Turns out that he has left his second set inside this morning and they now have no way of getting inside his building. Thankfully the Echagüe women in this family have their heads screwed on correctly because if it were left to the men (including me) we’d be stuffed.

This is demonstrated immediately with Agus and Silvi’s quick thinking to park the car in the underground carpark of the Carrefour supermarket. This saves us trying to find a spot on the street close enough to their place so as to not get drenched with the rain – we just need to cross the road and remember to purchase something in the supermarket on the way out so we don’t have to pay for parking there. We take the elevator up to the top floor of the apartment building where there is a common area residents can use to host parties, lunches etc. It has a large indoor room so we are out of the rain (thankfully) with a kitchenette and a very nice parrilla (which won’t be getting used today). There is a pool a further level up and an area to sunbathe a level above it again. Agus has prepared some vegan and celiac dishes for Silvi and Caro respectively and also sets to work with the help of others plating and putting out the food we picked up from Vicente Lopez. Alfie is happy watching his iPad and eating some of the snack food. Santi can’t get the Apple speaker to work as it seems that it is update Friday here for Apple software and it’s not possible to download the 1GB+ worth of data it needs…so no tunes. Instead we chat amongst ourselves and to Magui’s family who most of us are meeting for the first time. I’m sure that we will have more time to catch-up soon when we reconvene for part 2 – the church wedding & fiesta. For now though we say good bye to the newlyweds as they are off to spend the weekend at the Sofitel 5 star resort in Cardales.