Ideas for Your Perfect Wedding: Wedding Customs in Russia

It is not all relationships that lead to marriage and it is not all marriages that are through a wedding. A perfect wedding is a beautiful way to a beautiful life together. A wedding compels the couple to stick to their vows and remain committed to their marriage no matter how hard the hardships might be. This single day remains marked in our memories as long as the couple lives. The wedding day precedes other great family days. As a young girl i fantasized a lot about my wedding day. How beautiful i would look, how the day would be sunny, the maids, the food. I had a perfect imagination of how it would look like. As a teenage girl, my room was filled with books and magazines which had some tips and ideas of planning a wedding.

I wanted my perfect wedding day to be unique and so gathered information about weddings from different cultures. Ideas from foreign cultures help in making your big day very memorable. Do not use a car use a horse. I want to share my information about what happens during Russian weddings with you and i am sure you will have a wedding with a difference. Weddings in Russia are a mixture of European and American style and they also feature some elements of Russian traditions. A Russian wedding is well played out. It comes out as a play in a theatre where everyone is sure of their role. According to tradition the groom is supposed to go to the brides home and ask for the parents approval or ask for their daughter's hand in marriage.

Some of these traditional practices are becoming extinct. There are few cases where some people exercise the practice of ransoming the bride. Various fun games to tease the groom are organized. This is in an attempt to test the IQ of the groom and gauge his capability. The groom must sing, answer risque questions, reciting a poem and much more. He must shower the organizers with gifts such as money and sweets in order for him to be handed the bride. In Russia there is a tradition that the bride must organize a hen-party where she invites all her friends to help her celebrate her single hood as she says goodbye to it. Nowadays, even men organize a bachelors' party to celebrate as they leave their bachelor's lifestyle. This happens a day before the perfect wedding day.

After the church service, the newly wedded couple goes for a reception in a restaurant, banqueting hall or in a home where they are supposed to be received by the groom's parents. The grooms mother is supposed to give them bread and salt according to Russian traditions. The newly weds then eats the bread in turns. The person who eats the larger part of the bread then automatically becomes the head of the house. This ritual helps a lot in gender equality issues. It offers opportunity to the woman. In other cultures, the man is the head of the house by default. The uniqueness of a Russian wedding is in the "gor'ko". The young couple kisses for as long as it is possible as the guests count numbers from one. The longer the kiss, the stronger their relationship will be. Isn't it a perfect wedding!