Serbian wedding traditions are very different from any other wedding traditions and usually have nothing in common with western traditions. Many of them are based on superstitious beliefs and unfortunately many of them have died out or became impossible to execute nowadays.
Some of these traditions include:
Traditional weddings are supposed to take three days.
A day or so before the wedding the groom would go around with a bottle of brandy and invite all the guests.
Hours before the ceremony the groom is supposed to go to the bride’s home and “barter for” or try to “buy” the bride by bringing a music band a brandy to her home to appease bride’s brother and family.
The bride would be given “miraz” on her wedding day, this would include things that were collected by her parents over the years and could be bed sheets, towels, table cloths, furniture, money as well as houses and land.
The couples that wished for male offspring, were not supposed to get married in the days which names are feminine in gender (Serbian nouns have three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter; and those days would be: “sreda” – Wednesday, “subota” – Saturday and “nedelja” – Sunday), otherwise their first born child would be a girl.
On the wedding day, an apple on a stick is placed up high in a tree and the groom has to come and shoot the apple down with a rifle. This is to gain the rights to see the girl. If the groom misses the apple, then he’s not going to get married. Once the apple had been shot down, a small party was held and the bride would get ready to go to the church or registry office, accompanied by the local brass band.
After the wedding the wedding party is supposed to go to the groom’s house, this is where the bride takes a sift from her mother in law in which she finds apples, wheat, corn and other food items. She throws the sift onto the roof of the house, if the sift stays on the roof the bride will stay in the house.
The bride was not supposed to touch the threshold of the groom’s house, any bridge or any other river crossing, since those were the places where the evil spirits were lurking upon her, so she was supposed to skip over the threshold. One custom that still remains was that the bride should wear a veil on her wedding day, that would ward her from the evil eyes.
Story source: www.sites.google.com/site/draganalarry
Photo credits: http://www.soletphotography.com/
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