CHECHEN WEDDING PANCAKE SHOOTING
In a recent story coming out of Southern France, a very young bride to be was kidnapped and said to have gone missing for several days. Witnesses gave accounts of seeing her being lead away from a park and into a BMW by a companion associated with the abduction. The kidnapping became a national news story and sightings of this bride to be were reported from places as far away as Switzerland and Belgium. In the end her family confessed to having been a part of the kidnapping, a Chechen wedding tradition that involves a groom’s family taking the bride away a few days prior to her wedding.
I thought it a strange tradition and inquired further into Chechen rituals. There were other strange ones. During the third day of a traditional Chechen wedding festival guests are lead to a river where they through cornmeal pancakes into the water. Next the guests take guns and shoot at the pancakes, after which the bride draws a bucket of water from the river and the wedding party goes home. Some symbolism is easier to determine than others. Evidently as the guests are shooting an alleged water sprite rises to the surface to try and eat a pancake. Proceeding this water sprite homicide, the river has been cleansed and determined a safe place to visit.
In this light, the kidnapping seems completely rational. For more Chechen wedding traditions, look here