Davul ve zurna sustuktan sonra herkes nikâhın ne kadar güzel geçtiğini konuşuyordu.

It means after it/they fell silent or after it/they stopped playing.

It comes from susmak, which usually means to become silent or to stop making noise.

So:

• sus- = become silent
• -tuk / -dik = part of a verbal noun/adverbial form
• -tan sonra = after

Together, sustuktan sonra means after becoming silent / after falling silent.

In natural English here, you would probably understand it as after the drum and zurna stopped.

Yes, it looks similar, but here it is a different grammatical structure.

• sustuk by itself can mean we became silent
• but in sustuktan sonra, the -tuktan sonra part is a fixed subordinating pattern meaning after doing X

So in this sentence, sustuktan sonra is not saying after we became silent. It is saying after becoming silent / after they fell silent.

This is a very common source of confusion for learners because the forms look alike.

Because Turkish does not always mark plural the same way English does, especially when the meaning is already clear.

Here davul ve zurna clearly refers to two things because of ve (and), so no plural suffix is needed. Turkish often leaves nouns unpluralized in coordinated phrases like this.

So:

• davullar ve zurnalar would sound unnecessary here
• davul ve zurna is the natural way to say it

Not exactly.

• nikâh usually means the marriage ceremony itself, often the formal/legal or religious act of marriage
• düğün usually means the wedding celebration or wedding event more broadly

So nikâhın ne kadar güzel geçtiğini is specifically about how beautifully the marriage ceremony went, not necessarily the whole wedding party.

Depending on context, English might still translate it simply as the wedding, but the Turkish word is more specific.

Because nikâhın is in the genitive form, and it functions as the subject of the embedded clause.

The sentence contains a subordinate clause:

nikâhın ne kadar güzel geçtiği
= how beautifully the wedding ceremony went

In this kind of structure, the subject of the embedded clause often takes the genitive ending:

• nikâh = the marriage ceremony
• nikâhın = of the marriage ceremony / the marriage ceremony’s

So nikâhın is not possession in the simple English sense. It is part of a standard Turkish subordinate-clause pattern.

It means how beautifully it went or more naturally how well it went.

Breakdown:

• ne kadar = how / how much
• güzel = beautiful, nice
• geçtiğini = that it went / its having gone

So the whole phrase means:

how nicely the ceremony went

This is an embedded clause used as the object of konuşuyordu (was talking about).

This is a classic Turkish clause-nominalization pattern.

The form can be broken down roughly like this:

• geç- = go, pass
• -tiğ- / -dik = a nominalizing suffix used in subordinate clauses
• -i = third person possessive marker
• -ni = accusative marker, with buffer n

So:

• geçtiği = that it went / its going
• geçtiğini = the same clause, but marked as a direct object

That is why it can serve as the thing everyone was talking about:

Herkes ... konuşuyordu
= Everyone was talking about ...

and what they were talking about is:

nikâhın ne kadar güzel geçtiğini
= how beautifully the ceremony went

Konuşuyordu is the past continuous/imperfect form:

• konuştu = spoke / talked
• konuşuyordu = was talking / used to talk

Here konuşuyordu gives a background, ongoing feeling. It suggests that at that time, everyone was engaged in talking about how well the ceremony had gone.

So the sentence paints a scene:

• first, the music stops
• then, everyone is talking about the ceremony

Because Turkish often uses güzel geçmek very naturally for events, periods of time, visits, ceremonies, holidays, and similar things.

Examples of the same pattern:

• Toplantı güzel geçti. = The meeting went well.
• Tatil güzel geçti. = The vacation went well.
• Nikâh çok güzel geçti. = The marriage ceremony went very well.

So even though güzel literally means beautiful/nice, in this kind of sentence it often corresponds to English well.

The basic structure is:

[After the drum and zurna fell silent] [everyone] [was talking about how beautifully the ceremony had gone].

More literally:

• Davul ve zurna sustuktan sonra = after the drum and zurna fell silent
• herkes = everyone
• nikâhın ne kadar güzel geçtiğini = how beautifully the marriage ceremony went
• konuşuyordu = was talking

This word order is very natural in Turkish:

1. time/background information first
2. subject
3. object/content
4. main verb at the end

Yes. A very natural English rendering would be something like:

• After the drum and zurna fell silent, everyone was talking about how beautifully the wedding ceremony had gone.
• After the music stopped, everyone was talking about how well the ceremony had gone.

The second version is less literal, but it may sound more natural in English depending on context.