There’s a quiet intensity behind the act of refusal at the very first matchmaking — when traditions outweigh haste, and the heart of custom unfolds in deliberate pauses. As I reflected on this ritual—the way families welcome suitors with bread, testing intentions and intentions only welcomed, only accepted after several visits—it struck me how customs lean on patience, assessment, ritual.
I perceive these patterns from my place on Phu Quoc Island, where I photograph love in the tropics, yet my soul traces back to those nuanced Russian exchanges, where bread, cattle, even silence carry weight. In this second part of the series, let’s step into the world of engagement rituals—the conditional nods, the public agreement, the woven songs of fate—and explore how these traditions define beginnings, captured through my lens and legacy.
We continue to consider wedding traditions of the peoples of the world in general and wedding traditions in Russia in particular. Part two of five.
The previous article about Russian wedding traditions through the eyes of a wedding photographer.
So, no matter how much the parents and the bride herself were for the wedding, according to Russian wedding traditions, it was necessary to refuse the first matchmaking. And only with the third visit of the matchmakers, the bride's parents gave an affirmative answer. If the matchmakers were suitable for the bride's parents (no one cared about the bride's opinion, it could only be asked formally and not always, the bride was often not present at the matchmaking itself) they accepted their bread and cut it. If not, they gave the bread to the matchmakers and sent them home empty-handed.
After a few days, after a successful matchmaking, the bride's parents (or her relatives) went to the groom's house and assessed his well-being. Everything was done quite simply. The amount of bread, cattle, dishes and clothes was assessed. If it was not enough, in the opinion of those who came, then often the groom would get the cold shoulder. If the groom passed the test of solvency, after 2 weeks the traditional ceremony of shaking hands was performed (In modern wedding traditions this process is called differently: engagement, agreement, "zaruchiny", "zaporuki").
Actually, it was this most important pre-wedding ceremony that was the starting point for the wedding. Almost the entire village was present at this celebration, if the girl was a village girl. The parents, those who were richer, gave a ball in honor of their daughter's engagement. The celebration invariably took place in the bride's house, relatives from both sides were present, and the main purpose of this celebration was to publicly announce the upcoming wedding. In villages, the parents of the newlyweds sat opposite each other and were silent for several minutes, then there was a discussion, a note was written indicating the wedding day. After which they blessed their children with an icon and exchanged bread and salt.
The fathers of the bride and groom, having bowed seven times in turn, clapped hands and publicly vowed to complete the work they had started. Having received the parental blessing, the bride went out onto the porch - bowed seven times in all directions and informed those gathered that she was finally betrothed.
In the house of Russian nobles, everything happened somewhat differently. At a formal ball, the father announced his daughter's engagement and the wedding day, often the priest blessed the young couple, and sometimes the parents themselves, and then all those gathered approached the betrothed couple with official congratulations.
All this, of course, was accompanied by traditional ritual songs. In the north and south, the traditions regarding songs were diametrically opposed. In the north, these were mainly lamentations, while in the south, they were almost entirely cheerful songs, and the role of the lamentation itself was more formal there. Like the song component, the traditional wedding ceremony of "zaruchin" in the north of Russia had some differences in comparison with the above-described and was extremely dramatic. The groom and matchmaker came to the bride's house and sat down at the table with the bride's father.
The girl herself, no matter how happy she was about the upcoming wedding, had to wail and "kill herself". She put out the candle in front of the icons and ran away from home and hid, demonstrating her unwillingness to part with her maidenhood and get married. The bride's friends had to find her, catch her and bring her to her father. Led by the arms, the girl broke free and began to wail.
The apogee of the entire wedding ceremony was the "veiling" of the bride. The father covered his daughter's face with a kerchief, after which she stopped breaking free, but her wails (lamentations) became truly heartbreaking. The groom and matchmaker did not wait for the girl’s “performance” to end and left.
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