We went to a Romanian wedding last weekend. The groom was our friend Milo, a Serbian-American attorney. Milo has been consulting all over the region for the last few years. Some time ago, while working in Bucharest, he met a lovely Romanian woman (also a lawyer). One thing eventually led to another, and so there we all were.
It was our first Orthodox wedding ceremony, and it was very interesting. It was in the Sfetu Eleftereu church in central Bucharest. This is a beatiful large church, obviously recently renovated; the interior is dark and cavernous, but every surface is covered with paintings, in a very interesting sort of Byzantine-Academic style. Chairs were available, but everybody stood.
One big difference from Catholic and Protestant weddings: the ceremony is sung or chanted, not spoken. The priests sing for a bit, and then the choir responds. Very lovely.
Another touch that I liked: early in the ceremony, the bride and groom are given crowns, which they wear until the end. (Well, silvery tiara thingies.) These crowns, I was later told, have two meanings. One, they symbolize the new authority of the couple; they have entered into the formal estate of matrimony, and so have taken on both power and responsibility.
Two, they're crowns of martyrdom. I admit, I like that. Marriage involves sacrifice, which means suffering. Sure, a good marriage is much more good than bad. But I like a ceremony that is up front about the difficulty, right at the start.
Finally, at the end of the ceremony the entire wedding party walks in a circle, three times around the altar. Nothing special there, except that the bride had a train about 15 feet long. A little boy, perhaps a young cousin or some such, was holding up the end. The geometry of the situation was such that he had to trot quickly in order to keep up; he was panting visibly by the end of the last circle...
-- And how was it different from the Serbian Orthodox version, I asked our Serbian friends? "The Serbian crowns are gold, and bigger," said one. "Yes, and the Serbian version is longer." "Yes, much longer." I don't know why, but somehow that didn't surprise me.
Posted by douglas at September 29, 2003 03:56 PM