Letter from Chisinau: We looked around us to find the weediest guy to fight - for Moldovan tradition dictates each wedding feast needs a skirmish if the happy couple is to enjoy a life of good luck.
The pot-holed road had run out some miles back, its rugged final stretch a ragged red carpet that led us eventually to the rural wedding in Sadic, some hundred miles from Chisinau, Moldova's capital. Somewhere to the side of the broken road came sounds of celebration - we were met by Lena's friends and led in through the rustic dark to a schoolyard in which a giant circle of 30 Moldovans were dancing.
Music bled from the school hall. In an act of deft tradition, the fawn-suited groom appeared with a tray of tumblers. You had to down the wine in one gulp. We got better at this as the night wore on.
Dressed in their Sunday best, the guests danced as part of one revolving hand-holding circle. The single men and women wore white sashes and were sent off to demolish a bucket of wine: they were not allowed back until it was empty. It was just 9pm on a Sunday and the wedding feast would run on until after dawn.
Inside in the hall, we sat at groaning, long, low tables: for each group of six, there were numerous plates of sausage, chicken astride spaghetti, strange pike stuffed with meat, raw fish, portions of steaming mutton. You got a fork, but no knife. The wine was young and local, and served up in old vodka and cognac bottles.
This is the poorest country in Europe but it suddenly felt like the land of plenty. Elbow to elbow, 130 guests got stuck in to this wedding feast.
Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, is over two hours' drive from Sadic. Its tree-lined streets, with their white-hued buildings, witnessed a vicious anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903 in which 49 died and 586 were wounded, with 1,500 houses and 660 shops being destroyed.
On August 27th, 1991, the country declared its independence from the USSR, having already proclaimed Romanian its official language two years earlier and banned the Cyrillic alphabet.
It has fine parks with benches on which young and old sit listlessly as Johnny Fortycoats-style women rake leaves; around which stomp majestic sleek black crows, chomping cigar-like walnuts in their beaks.
Poverty in the capital seems fairly well hidden - there is little or no sign of begging or homelessness.
But the pavements are a matrix of cracks; the edges of curbs are crumbling; manhole covers are missing (stolen to be sold as scrap metal). At night, while there are cafes and bars that open late, there is no street lighting: as you inch home, you risk falling into a hole.
Russia has banned all imports of Moldovan wine and cognac on spurious health grounds and the country is feeling the pinch. To promote the annual wine festival last month, its Communist Party government suspended its $60 (€46.38) tourist visa fee.
Some weeks later, in a bar filled with wizened men, we kill four glasses of rotgut wine for 14 lei (a little less than €1).
Three workmen roll in, wearing matching filthy blue boiler suits.
They sit a moment and drain a quick glass. On their backs, an incongruous English logo: "Advanced Office Solutions."
Meanwhile at the wedding, things have moved on. From the kitchen out dance six headscarved, apron-wearing women who had done the cooking. They lilt and sway in front of the bride and groom for 10, 12 minutes, one emitting a high-pitched yelp that displays her golden tooth to gleaming advantage.
Next, guests bearing symbolic loaves of bread start up another strange dance. One twirls above his head his present: a food processor still in its box.
The black-bearded priest raises a crystal decanter and rewards us with better wine, as Vikalena, a young woman from Ukraine, points to her husband.
"We lived in Dublin for some months," she says. But couldn't quite recall where.
The whole village of Sadic is dancing, but there still hasn't been a good-luck fight. Somewhat inebriated, I practise forming a fist with my fingers, and look around nervously. Just in case.