Fenan + Merhawie: Where Culture Meets Modern Elegance

Her Big Day Team
Dec 13, 2016
3 min read

Bride: Fenan Russom

Groom: Merhawie Woldezion

Location: Dallas, TX

Wedding Date: 10/15/2016 – 10/16/2016

Venues:

Ceremony was at the St. Philopateer Coptic Orthodox Church
Reception was at Hilton Dallas/Rockwall Lakefront
Melsi was at Dallas/Addison Marriott Quorum by the Galleria

Number of Guests: 600

Culture Represented: Eritrean

Description or Theme of wedding: Our wedding was two days, with a contemporary/modern ceremony and reception on the first day and a colorful, traditional melsi on the second day.

The most memorable part of your wedding: The day was filled with memorable moments from seeing our families from all over the world come together to celebrate us, to all of the wonderful surprise performances from HIDRI DALLAS! Our most memorable was when the reception celebration was capped with an explosion of red, blue, green, and gold fireworks overlooking the water! This was a surprise for our family & guests and they absolutely loved it!

Did you do anything unique, crazy or fun: Our goal was to make our wedding a unique and memorable experience four our guests.

The fire Work at our reception was definitely unique especially since it was done in the colors of the Eritrean Flag!
We wanted to bring a little bit of Eritrea to our guest, so for our wedding favors we made mini Asmara Areki bottles (filled with real Areki famous Eritrean liquor) with our name and wedding date engraved in the logo. We wrapped the Areki bottle the same way they wrap it in Eritrea, with Hadas Eritrea (Eritrean news paper) which was brought in all the way from Eritrea.
Keeping the spirit of everything Unique, for our Sunday decor we made most of our decoration from scratch. Our Back drop which was a Meshrefet Board made with individual meshrefets (Hand Woven raffia palm platter) of different sizes that were brought from Keren Eritrea and hand painted by the Bride and her AMAZING friends. We had two different centerpieces, one was clay vases that were hand made with the pattern of Zuria from Eritrea. Our second centerpieces were Adere Vases (because I, the bride, am entirely obsessed with Adere) that were hand painted by the BRIDE'S AMAZING FRIEND! For our chair tie we used Adere (Eritrean patterned scarfs) which were brought in from Mendefera Eritrea.

What was the most difficult part about planning your wedding: Most difficult part of our wedding was getting our guest to understand the importance of RSVP. We had a very strict by invitation only and no KIDS allowed rule. Trying to get people to send in their RSVP was like trying to give a cat a bath, just IMPOSSIBLE! We individually had to call every guest 2+3 times just to get a response.

What was the easiest part about planning your wedding: I’ve read and heard that most brides struggle with trying to please their parents which always results in giving up something they want. Lucky us, our parents were on the same page with us on everything, but especially our GUEST COUNT and our "invitation only" rule. They were nice and understanding and did everything in their power to keep us stress free and helped us get our dream wedding!

Any words of wisdom to the couple planning their wedding: Wedding planning can be very stressful make sure you don’t get lost in all the planning and lose your self or more importantly your relationship with your husband to be. Be realistic with your ideas so that you are not disappointed in the end if they don’t end up happening. This is a once in a life time experience SO ENJOY IT!!!