It is probably a bit unusual to read an article about wedding traditions on the website of a professional photographer, but nowadays many wedding ceremonies are simply forgotten and the main consultant on them is a wedding photographer. Therefore, there is an idea to cover the topic of wedding traditions, ceremonies and signs as extensively as possible.
Each nation, due to beliefs and religions, had its own wedding traditions and ceremonies for the union of two loving hearts, each beautiful and unique in its own way.
Let's start with a look at the wedding ceremonies and traditions of Ukraine.
The period of celebrating weddings itself was very specific and did not stretch out throughout the year. In pre-Christian Ukraine, there was a custom to celebrate weddings at the beginning of spring, when all living things awakened to life from hibernation and sought to conceive. That is why this period of the year was considered the most favorable time for a wedding, that is, for the formation of a new family. But with the conversion to Christianity, the situation with the traditional period of marriage changed, because the fast that fell at this time prohibited any kind of entertainment.
In the summer, there was no time to celebrate weddings, work in the fields and at home absorbed all the daylight and not so daylight hours. By autumn, when the hard work was already finished, and the vegetable gardens presented their hospitable hosts with truly royal gifts, abundance dictated a newfound tradition - celebrating weddings precisely during this period. Although there were other loopholes for those eager to marry between fasts: in winter, in the period between the two winter fasts - from Christmastide to Maslenitsa and in the spring after Easter before the beginning of field work.
But although our people agreed to change the traditional period of marriage, they did not immediately come to terms with the newly introduced wedding ceremony. Ukrainians got married out of legal necessity, but the newlyweds lived separately for several years until they had a traditional Ukrainian wedding and only after that were they considered a family. The Holy Synod demanded that such people be punished, allegedly for adultery.
And no matter how hard the Christian clergy tried, they could not pacify the rebellious people and they themselves compromised. In the 19th century, the church allowed people to get married on their wedding day, church and folk marriages were united. In different regions of Ukraine, wedding traditions and rituals have some differences, even neighboring villages cannot boast of an identical wedding scenario. But each of them has integral attributes of the event: matchmaking, bride ransom, baking a loaf of bread, hen party (hen party), weaving a tree, wedding, the young man's yard, the young woman's yard, dressing the bride, a festive table, etc. Traditionally, a Ukrainian wedding began with matchmaking.
Matchmakers from the groom's male relatives were sent to the chosen one, and preference was given to elderly people with "well-hung" tongues, because their skill in eloquence often determined whether the groom would leave with a "pumpkin" or with towels. The head of the matchmakers entered the potential bride's house with bread and made a traditional speech, the girl had to stand by the stove and shyly pick at it. If the matchmakers were successful, the girl, as a sign of her consent, cut the bread they brought, saying: "I cut the bread, I give a vow, and you will accept me as your own child."
The matchmakers, in turn, received bread on a towel from the girl's parents, bowed and said: "Thank you, girl, for getting up early and embroidering the towel." They also agreed on the bride show and the engagement. They would mainly ask for the girls from their own village, but there were cases when the groom was gifted with pumpkins by all the villagers, and then the matchmakers would go to neighboring villages for the "loot".
This gave rise to the tradition of brightly painting the huts with girls of marriageable age, so that visiting elders would not pass by.
Today, wedding ceremonies have transformed far beyond the village huts of Ukraine. Couples now seek out destinations that combine natural beauty with timeless symbolism. One such place is Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam, where traditions meet modern love stories. Here, ceremonies on the beach under palm trees often echo the same depth of meaning — a union blessed not only by family and community, but also by nature itself.
As a wedding photographer working on Phu Quoc, I often see how couples incorporate their own rituals — from symbolic toasts to small traditional gestures borrowed from their homelands — into a tropical setting. Just as Ukrainian weddings once used bread, ribbons, and trees as symbols of fertility and purity, today’s couples on Phu Quoc add fire shows, lantern releases, or even flower blessings on the sea. The essence remains unchanged: to honor love with beauty, meaning, and memory.
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