Mari & Kaarel | A Fun Fall Wedding in Tartu
A rainy June afternoon in 2012, young would-be musicians wait in Tartu Heino Eller's Music Academy, all in line for their turn for the solfeggio entrance exam. Mari sees a scared-looking young man exiting, having failed to perform the complex rhythm-exercises. The same guy gets noticed by Kaarel, who proceeds to define the nature of a quint with great confidence and a slightly condescending tone. This is Mari's first memory of Kaarel.
In September the school-life takes the fresh students to shared lectures, where together they learn extreme-solfeggio and the “Parade of Snowmen”, or everything an aspiring virtuoso would need. The scatterbrained Kaarel kept "forgetting" to take a pencil-sharpener or an eraser to music theory, so he would have to borrow one from the beautiful girl sitting behind him. Mari had nothing against lending because the commonplace lack of intelligence, that normally would accompany the drummer's profession in her mind, was in no way reflected in Kaarel's asking-style, which was surprisingly courteous.
Wedding Photography: Valdur Rosenvald | Rosenvald Photography
Host: Jakob Gill
Wedding Videography: Kaspar Eigi
Venue: Luunja kultuuri- ja vabaajakeskus
Pastor: Leho Paldre
Church: Tartu Kolgata kogudus
Bride’s make-up: Milena Ilutehnik
Bride’s hair: Milena Ilutehnik
Bouquet & flowers: Pille Peterson
Wedding dress: Veronique Tartu Salong
Wedding rings: GoldTime
Invitations: Maivi Kõre
Groom’s suit: Monton
Catering: Kapteni Kelder
Wedding Band: Dance-o-phones
Wedding car: Tauno Mõts
Wedding cake: Kodusoe OÜ
Music at the Ceremony: Andrus Kasepuu
The sharpener led to talking outside of class and in December when Mari competed in a song contest and Kaarel backed her up with a good beat, he finally mustered a lion in his heart and courageously asked Mari to come on a date with him. The waitress brought peppermint tea on their Pierre Cafe rendezvou. Mari notices that though the bush of plants in the pot is thick enough to hide in, the water seems reluctant to take on a green hue. Turns out that the blame laid with their waitress, who was perhaps hoping the spark between the new couple would be enough to actually boil the water.
“Turns out that the blame laid with their waitress, who was perhaps hoping the spark between the new couple would be enough to actually boil the water.”
From that day forward, Mari and Kaarel decided to not trust cafe workers and to boil their own tea. That of course happened in the good old Tartu Khrushchev-house district where the young ms Soone lived then. Especially good was the tea after a long walk under the nightlights of Tartu.
The big uniting came during Kolgata Church's winter camp, where the two dedicated most of their time to seeking God together and asking each other the tough questions. Tea-nights, walks, and united running sessions made the connection between the two so strong that in the spring of 2013, the new blossoming relationship was made public to all eyes via Facebook.
But in the fall of that same year, Mari's road took her away to Viljandi for music-teacher studies. That set the course to a five-year long-distance relationship. They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. During the week, countless hours got spent on Skype-calls and all weekends just disappeared into time together either in Viljandi, Tartu, Kadrina, or Tallinn.
The hardships of separation weren't measured in distance, because both Mari's half a year in the University of Limerick, and Kaarel moving next door to Mari to Estonian Defense Forces Battalion in Tallinn, proved to be challenging.
At the same time, Kaarel started liking living close so much so, that he decided he couldn't live without Mari's warm embrace any longer. And so he scraped together all of his savings, ate instant noodles on his soldiers' pay, and bought a ring. Waiting for the right moment, time passed and the tension grew, but the moment finally came, arriving on Christmas Eve, when in the Tartu Botanical gardens under a gazebo in the middle of the cold, Kaarel got down on one knee and rose from there with tears of joy and an overjoyed heart.
And that's how it happened that two music students from Tartu get to start building their life together with God's magnificent blessing.
