Hrvoje and Katarina got married on July 28, 2011 at a hilltop villa, surrounded by silvery olive groves and bountiful pear orchards.
Bathed in dappled sunlight, 26 friends, family members and a feisty Maltese puppy celebrated the wedding. Katarina, slender and regal with her high cheekbones and porcelain skin, wore an understated, ivory silk gown and carried a clutch of white roses. She struggled to keep her emotions at bay, looking coltish and nervous at first then relaxing as the hours passed and reality settled around her.
Hvroje, in a dark suit with a red tie, just beamed – bursting with pride and besotted with love for his bride. His smile never left – though he did ditch his jacket and tie as afternoon gave way to evening.
At one point, the entire party gathered on the lawn and took a big group photograph – just like Patrick and I did at our wedding 11 years ago.
Their day lasted well into the night – a great feast toasted many times over with wine and cocktails and Coca-Cola for the kids, including the two adorable flower girls who did all they could to rid themselves of their shoes. The flowing wine washed down the savory pastries, roasted bird with fresh rosemary and great tureens of wedding soup – capped off by a luscious cake, topped with fresh cherries and strawberries.
How do I know this?
Because I have their wedding album – all 100 full-color, high-gloss pages of it – and I need to get it back to them.
Only, I have no idea what their last name is. Apparently they hail from a land that has no problem stringing together six consonants in a row to form a word, while throwing a few squiggly marks over the C’s for good measure. In their language, J’s and Z’s litter the landscape in a triple-word-score bonanza.
The company that assembles my photobooks – MyPublisher.com – sent me Hrvoje and Katarina’s wedding album by mistake. I’m not sure who has my account of our trip to Oktoberfest, but I hope the happy couple didn’t open their box to find a full-color recap of my throwing up on the airplane.
The good news is that MyPublisher immediately sent me a link to re-order my Germany book with expedited production and delivery at no cost. They also asked me for the bar code on Hrvoje and Katarina’s book so the company could immediately do the same for them. I asked MyPublisher if they wanted me to return the wedding album, but with shipping, quality control, privacy issues… well, it was just tidier for the company to produce a new album and ship it directly to the happy couple.
So, I’m stuck with their wedding album. As one who has labored over the kitchen table sorting through memories well into the dark night, I just can’t bring myself to throw the book away, like some empty champagne bottle or used cocktail napkin. Ergo, I need your help.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help me find Katarina and Hvroje so I can send them their wedding album and we can all live happily ever after.
Locating the targets presents unique geographic and linguistic challenges, as there are only two pages with words in the entire document. Everything else is photographic evidence.
According to Google Translate, the language is Croatian:
Cast nam je pozvati Vas da budete uz nas
na dan našeg vjencanja
28 Srpnja 2011 godine
u Livadama, Istra, u 16:00 sati
We are honored to invite you to be with us
on the day of our wedding
28 July 2011 years
in Livade, Istria, at 16:00 am
Facebook claims to have 800 million users worldwide, 80 percent of whom live outside the United States. 1.5 million live in Croatia. Twitter has between 36 million and 360 million account-holders, depending on whose statistics you choose to follow and whether you believe those accounts are active users or abandoned zombie-handles. I have 261 Facebook friends (no, really) and 119 Twitter followers (though I’m uncertain how many of those are real or spam). LinkedIn apparently has 100 million users… and I have a hard time keeping up with that account.
And yes, I have joined the Borg I previously railed against. Let’s not get side-tracked here, people, we have a job to do:
I propose that we leverage social media for good (rather than just posting funny photos of kittens) and see if we can locate Katarina and Hrvoje through our personal networks of exponential mathematics so I can return their wedding album to them before they celebrate their first anniversary.
We have 189 days and the clock is running – let’s get to work!
P.S. If we haven’t made substantial progress in one month (February 21, 2012), I will post another clue.
A quick Google search on their names returns your blog post as numero uno. Congratulations on having SEO by the short hairs.
There is a video that looks to be from the wedding made by Katherine Radeljic on Vimeo but it is private. Perhaps contacting Vimeo will get you through to the videographer and on to the newlyweds.
http://vimeo.com/30627848
Do I win?
Well, I am from Croatia. Maybe, I can help. Pls contact me on email!
Stacy B, yes, this is so romantic, I want to help you! You rock, gurl!
If I understand correctly, you are trying to return them the photo album because you’d feel guilty throwing it away.
Why is there a deadline and how come you won’t post all the (possible) clues at once so we can get this over with. Is it thought as a game?
I personally know someone from Livade so I’ll ask them.
Hi Maja, the good news is we found them! Just got word yesterday and I’m waiting to hear back from them on some details. I originally thought of this as an experiment to see if we could find them using only social media – Facebook, twitter, Google+, etc – which is why I didn’t include the second clue. Based on the second clue alone, which was the name of the inn where they got married, I could have probably found them more directly. Either way, it took only 20 hours from the time I posted the blog until I received word from them! So thank you for helping!
Mi ih naci!
We found them! Thanks for your help! More details coming soon!