The day of our wedding arrived. The official ceremony was to be in Üsküdar, a conservative district in the city, and we’d rented a yacht for an evening party on the Bosporus.

Our good friend Omer offered the use of his car, and he drove us to the municipal office, where Özge’s family and a small group of close friends were already waiting. Inside, another ceremony was in progress. That’s not unusual: In summertime, these offices are like factories, churning out newlyweds every half hour.

Actually, it was fairly quiet that day, much more so than it might have been had we chosen to get married at the weekend. Evidently, everyone likes to get married at the weekend. However, the municipal offices charge a lot more, which is why we chose to get married mid-week. So in this case, we were lucky. The office was not that crowded. Also it was Ramadan, a time devoted to fasting and prayer, so most observing Muslims don’t have weddings during this time.

The actual ceremony was arguably the fastest on record. Özge and I were escorted into the chambers, and up onto a kind of dais, where some flowers were arranged. We sat down, looking out at our friends and Özge’s family, all of them taking photos and smiling with anticipation.

Beforehand, we’d been told that we would need an interpreter, for the cost of 250 lira. We supposed that this was for legal reasons. The interpreter popped up onto the dais just as the priest arrived. The priest was carrying a book, which he proceeded to open – it had all of our information in it.

Speaking very rapidly, as though he had been interrupted from more important things, the priest asked Özge if she accepted to be my wife, and whether I accepted to be her husband. We signed our names in the book. Then, the priest pronounced us married.

“Congratulations!” the translator said, having completed his duties, shaking my hand.

Everyone applauded and cheered. It was all over. The whole ceremony lasted about five minutes.

We posed for more pictures – we spent more time posing for photographs, smiling and shaking people’s hands, embracing – than anything else. You felt like the president. “For a day, anyway,” as Özge said.

###

In the evening, it was time for our Bosporus party. The boat was slated to pick us up at the Üsküdar pier at 6:30. The pier was very crowded at that time, with many people lining up to get ferryboats over to Sultanahmet, where there was going to be a free meal for iftar, the breaking of the fast, at sundown.

Our boat, Kaderim, which means “My Fate,” arrived and we got onboard. Özge was still wearing her white dress, but had also donned her denim jacket and traded the stiff wedding shoes for more comfortable purple slippers. I was still wearing my suit. When we passed the people waiting for the iftar ferries, one covered woman stared at Özge with a mixture of curiosity and faint disapproval – probably at the blue jean jacket over the wedding dress, too casual for the woman’s conservative taste. Most of the people, though, after more than 12 hours fasting, were too tired and famished to notice, although one old woman, sitting on the dock near the waterfront, saw us and clapped. I thought it was nice of her, so I tipped a smile of thanks.

We set off on the Kaderim. The Bosporus was turbulent at that hour, with so many ferry boats traversing its waters – it being rush hour and also nearing iftar. We pitched back and forth, rising and and falling on huge swells, spray shooting up into the air. Omer and I went up on top to the terrace. “It’s like riding a bull!” Omer said, as we hung on.

Downstairs, Özge and her family were busy preparing the buffet dinner – actually we’d had it catered, so it was mostly just a matter of laying out the different dishes. It was classic Turkish, with a mixture of everything. Unfortunately, Özge’s mother and sister got seasick, and ended up vomiting (I didn’t know about this until later), and were unable to enjoy the dinner.

We hovered just offshore on the European side of the city for some time, waiting for the ferries that were backed up at the Kabataş pier to clear a bit. We’d arranged to pick up most of the guests there, and we saw them all, looking handsome and smart, gathered on the iskele and waiting when we finally arrived.

With everyone onboard, the Kaderim fired up its engines, and we set off, cruising north, passing under the Bosporus bridge. By now, the waters in the strait had settled, and everyone began to relax. We broke out bottles of wine, and poured glasses, raised toasts and sat back looking out at the great city spread out all around, as the sun began to set.

Özge and I danced on the top deck, to Elvis Presley’s “Always on my Mind,” and to Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” Have you ever tried dancing on the top deck of a boat? Not easy, my friend. At one point – no, at several points – as we twirled around, in a tragic burlesque of elegance, the boat hit a swell, and we lost our balance and were nearly tossed overboard.. It would have been something, I reflected, had the bride and groom been pitched, wholesale, into the sea and had to be rescued. What a story that would make! Images of our guests crying out, our friend Omer perhaps, or one of the others, stripping and diving briskly in to save us, sprang comically to mind.

Fortunately, we made it to the end of the dance, and even got through dinner with no casualties. The boat continued north, passing the beautiful Victorian houses along the shores of Bebek and Yenikoy, where the fastest, strongest currents pushed by … then under the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge, where the rosy façade of the Zeki mansion, built in the 19th Century for one of the sultan’s commanders, stares ghost-like from the banks.

“Make a wish,” someone nearby said.

By nightfall, we had reached Beykoz, where the Bosporus bends and points toward the inky waters of the Black Sea. A hazy full moon hung over the city, and everyone felt relaxed and happy, listening to Turkish folk music, sipping wine and talking in the twilight. All over the city, people were breaking the fast, having their iftar dinners, and there was a lightness in the air as that of twenty million expelled breaths. It was the sentimental hour, where for a flickering, golden moment, the lonely universe seems an intimate and friendly place to be, and everyone could possibly be in love.

But nothing gold can stay. We headed back, the captain stepping on it a bit, and the night got darker, the waters shining in blackness. There was more dancing, the traditional halay this time, with everyone joining hands and circling, clapping their hands, circling again, clapping again.

By 11 o’clock, it was all over. We dropped some of the guests off at Kabataş, then returned once more to Üsküdar. Everyone was exhausted, especially Özge and I. We’d had enough of being the president, of being king and queen for a day. It was too tiring. We longed for it all to be over, and to go back to our normal routine of being jellyfish most of the time. I suppose part of the fatigue was the aftermath of all the anticipation, the planning as well. You spend so much time planning, anticipating, dealing with all the small, key details … the documents, the blood tests, the caterers, the persnickety boat captains, the invitations, the arrival times of guests, not to mention all the normal stresses and demands of the great city … the translators who want 250 lira for 5 minutes of work, just to make sure you understand that you are in fact getting married, and do you understand that?

Yes, we understand.

Well, the ceremony, the party, the fuss – all that is behind us now. What else to say? What comes next? I guess the best way approach it is to remember the gift from Alice, our friend and the only colleague from my school who attended the wedding. She insisted on giving us a gift, a jar of candy. Attached was a hand-made card, bearing an italic inscription that read:

“I love her and that is the beginning of everything.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

###

James Tressler is a writer whose books, including “Conversations in Prague,” “Lost Coast D.A.,” and “The Trumpet Fisherman and Other Istanbul Sketches,” can be found at Lulu.com. He lives in Istanbul.