Ekaterina Boldyreva, About Wedding

Abstract

Ekaterina recalls that when she was a child she saw the wedding of the woman who babysat her. The wedding lasted for three days and all the brides wealth (including cloth, dresses and gifts) were hung on a rope. When the wedding finished and the bride was about to leave her house, she (the bride) cried a lot. Today, Ekaterina says, weddings are done differently. Gifts are made with money. In different places people do weddings differently. For example, in the village of Buran in Lagansk, the groom enters the bride’s house directly. In other villages, in contrast, the groom is met by the bride’s side on the outskirts of their village and escorted into the bride’s house. In Ketchenerovskiy and Maloderbetovskiy rayons, the bride bows in front of the groom’s side by kneeling on a specially prepared mattress. Ekaterina’s oldest son married a Russian woman. Ekaterina asked the bride’s side to prepare blue and white threads, according to a Kalmyk tradition. Compared to Kalmyk weddings, Russian ones are simpler and smaller in terms of participants. Ekaterina herself married into a traditional family. She never walked inside the house barefooted, nor sat at the same table with her father-in-law who was a traditional man. He was religious, read prayers every morning, and always carried Buddhist prayer beads. Ekaterina recalls that once when she was in a bride’s delegation, they escorted the bride to the groom’s house after the wedding. A bride’s delegation (that sends the bride off to her new house) has to have an even number of members. In contrast, delegations that go to bring the bride should consist of uneven number of people (with a view that the bride herself makes the number even). Given the importance of color symbolism, people should wear light dresses at weddings.