When we first arrived in Finike in the fall of 2009, we met many new people. Including two very nice men. The brothers Ümit and Samet. Samet is an agent, with an office immediately outside of the Marina and Ümit now manages the new Setur Marina at Kaş, where I recently stayed for a few days.
As I have repeatedly said, almost every Turk you meet is an extremely nice and friendly person. Ümit and Samet are especially nice and friendly.
I can quote countless examples of their kindness, but the subject of this email is that I was honored to be invited to attend the wedding of Samet Gölgeci & Huriye Düğün Töreni on April 21 in Kaş. (I hope that I have all the name spelled correctly with the correct Turkish letters. Please forgive me if I have screwed things up.)
Samet naturally has many friends in the Marina. He even hired a bus, to take a crowd of us there. It is not a long way, but the road is very windy and therefore relatively slow, so takes a couple of hours each way.
It was my first and only Turkish wedding so far, so aside from being a very happy experience, it was also interesting to me to see what is customary. Someone had hired a large hall and decorated it. I don’t know how many were in attendance. 300? 500? A large group of people of all ages in any case. There was live music and dancing, primarily Turkish, but often Western. By Western I mean music that is recognizable to North Americans and Europeans as popular tunes. I’m not referring to the, “my sweetheart broke my heart and ran off with my dog and my pickup truck” kind. Although we did listen to a very nice country-western group north of Rome, some years ago, at an artichoke Festival. They did specialize in exactly that kind of music. It was great fun for all. Bubba and Lucy Mae would have loved it, too, if they had been there..
Anyway, I am honored to have been able to attend the wedding of Samet & Huriye. Sorry to take so long to tell you about it. I certainly mean no disrespect, but so often, it just seems like there’s something that I have to do first. Probably the main thing I need to do first is improve my organizational skills.
The large number of people that have written me emails and not been answered, probably given up on me. But I hope that most of you understand.
Dave
Alegria1976's Blog 
Thanks, Dave, for this interesting story about the wedding, and I’m glad you had a good time there. Bill and I were in Turkey very briefly on a cruise some time ago and spent time in Istanbul and Kusadasi, which we enjoyed very much.