Officials for wedding registry admit that they have to cut the ceremony timeframe to handle all newlyweds, the Trud newspaper says.
According to Galina Yermakova, director of the Tambov wedding palace, over 1,000 weddings were registered in Tambov in 2004. About 100 couples got married last week. "I am convinced that their amount will reach 3,000 by the end of the year," Ms. Yermakova noted. In her words, the town has seen nothing of the kind in the last ten years. Mostly people between 19 and 23 get married. They were born in the mid-1980s when the country saw a baby boom.
Tambov weddings have become more gorgeous. Newlyweds order black caviar, sturgeon, French and Italian vintage wines, said the director of a Tambov restaurant. Vodka is not popular now. Orchestra or Gypsy ensembles from Moscow are often invited to wedding parties.
The similar situation is in Kursk. According to local wedding official Irina Tatarenkova, couples are queuing up in all the three Kursk wedding registry offices. Well-to-do villagers come to Kursk to register their weddings. Traditionally, the wedding hall should be carpeted with rose petals.
Irkutsk has beaten all wedding records. 440 couples got married in the central wedding palace in July (while only 390 couples got married in August 2003 across Irkutsk). The schedule of registration has been changed and now the wedding registry offices open at 9.00. All days are busy until November.
About 40,000 marriages were registered in Moscow in 2004, 1,000 more than last year. If the trend continues, Russia will overcome the demographic crisis in the near future.
