Categories: Arvid Ratnieks

Weddings have always been important events in Latgale. There used to be two types of weddings. The more refined ones were called – for two tables, when the wedding began at the bride’s home, then everybody went to church and then in the evening they celebrated the wedding at bride’s home and then, on the second day, the whole company moved to the just-married man’s home.

Food and drinks were plain. The usual drink was homemade beer. And there was such a unit of measurement – one beer or two beers. One beer, one portion of beer made usually was about twenty – twenty-five buckets. But if there were two beers, then the number of buckets was forty or fifty. If the company comprised about fifty or sixty people, then, depending on the means, on the first day there was also some stronger drinks. There was vodka, and, of course, also the local Latgalian production that was called kandža, samogonka [homebrew, moonshine].

Well, it was not called šmakovka in the area of Daugavpils, that name has now become introduced here from some place around Rēzekne, where homebrew was called šmakovka. There were dishes. Food was usually prepared by at least one invited cook. That was a woman, who went from wedding to wedding and cooked for the guests. Two or three local women helped her, but they also were from those who were engaged in that. Usually, a calf, a pig was butchered, and those were meat dishes. Cakes have always been made – real countryside cakes.

            And there were more refined dishes, too. If the cook was good, then she made various – garnished everything. I remember that at one wedding the cook had garnished the meat loaf so that the men did not touch that at all in the first evening, because they thought that was a dessert. And then, on the second day, Vaidere Ļoņa took the meat, sliced and warmed it up on the pan and only then the men ate it. 

Researcher: Dr. philol. Valentīns Lukaševičs, Daugavpils Universitāte