Wedding traditions

A gorgeous white gown, bridal veil and limousine… The dream of every bride? Not at all. In the Hutsul region, it is more prestigious to wear the national costume on one’s wedding day just like I the great-grandparents of modern Hutsuls did in times immemorial.

A WEDDING PARTY here usually begins in the late afternoon because many things have to be done during the day; only then can the party start. The festivities can go on for two, three or even five days!

A bride wearing an embroidered shirt sits on a chair in a room crowded with guests. Musicians play and sing wedding songs and regale themselves. A skillful woman (sometimes, two) braids many little plaits on the bride’s head decorating them with colorful ribbons, spangles and adornments. All this lasts for an hour to an hour and a half and some­times even longer. When everything is ready, an elaborate structure on the bride’s head is crowned with a separate ribbon, called a chiltse.

Then the dressing process begins. On top of the shirt, a woolen zapaska is put on, and on top of it – flowery woolen shawls. The more shawls there are, the richer the bride. A keptar is put on top, and the shoulders are covered with an embroidered towel. The bride is to wear these clothes for at least 24 hours or even longer. If the bridegroom lives in a different village or even a different region, the bride’s party together with guests have to travel 60 kilometers or even further. But first, they should celebrate at home with their guests and receive the parents’ blessing. The bride leaves after a special wedding dance: Kalachi are put on her shoulders, and all the guests dance around her.

When the bride and bridegroom meet, they go to the marriage ceremony and then to the bridegroom’s parents. Sometimes they have to walk long distances into the mountains, because the roads are impassable.

The bridegroom’s parents meet the young couple to the accompaniment of “troyisti muzyky” playing cymbals, violin, pipes and tambourine. The mother scatters grain and sweets on the young couple to bless them for a long and prosperous family life. The musicians welcome every new guest with a new melody. There are two marquees in the yard: one containing tables with food and drinks and the other used as a dancing ground.

When all the guests are gathered the ceremony of presentation of gifts, or povnytsya, begins. In front of the young couple there is a table with alcoholic beverages – a kalach with a hole in the middle and a small glass on top. Every guest is to drink to the health of the young family, put some money in the kalach and present a gift. That is, money is not considered a gift. In general, Hutsuls have a rather solid and pragmatic approach to the issue of gifts. There is even a kind of tariff regarding the amount of gifts in some villages. Sometimes, during the povnytsya ritual a specially appointed person announces loudly the value of each gift presented. Therefore, if you put less money, the whole village will laugh at you. However, this tradition does not exist everywhere. In some plac­es, it is considered sufficient for each person to present the equivalent of $20-30 and a practical gift. After povnytsya, the wedding party gets into full swing: all guests dance, have fun and regale themselves. The bridegroom and bride must necessarily dance Hutsulka with the bridesmaid and best man. The celebration goes on until the next morning. Some hosts consider it necessary to arrange a place where tired guests can rest and even have a nap. And then – get back to dances and fun.

Wedding party cuisine deserves special attention – it is prepared under the supervision of an invited cook. It is she alone who receives money for her work and takes care of everything. Her subordinates, women who do all the work, usually are neighbors and relatives, and they are not paid for their assistance.

The more delicate the cooking, the richer it is considered to be. For instance, there are traditional Hutsul cabbage rolls made of sau erkraut with corn porridge and a leaf of lard inside. Every roll is to be as thin as a finger, which implies painstaking work. But here is special appeal in that – the more labor invested, the higher the dish’s value.

In some wedding parties, they cook homemade meat dumplings which, although not a Hutsul dish, were in all probability assimilated by local dwellers during Soviet times. Yet again, it is a first-rate feast where tiny dumplings are made by hand for 200 or even 300 people! On the wedding tables, there are necessarily some traditional Hutsul dishes: banosh, brynza and lots of pastries. Dishes are served in large bowls, together with spoons; usually there are neither forks nor individual plates for each guest. Local people know that visitors are somewhat shocked with this, so plates and forks are placed for such guests.

At dawn, the woman, who dressed up the bride, now takes the bride’s clothes off and upbraids her plaits, while the groom is to put on a shawl on his young wife. It is traditional for a bride to resist him thrice, since it is such a pity to part from the carefree and joyful girl’s life. Only after the fourth attempt does the bride allow her husband to put on the shawl that symbolizes her transition to a married woman.

Having taken off the Hutsul costume, the bride puts on, as they say here, ‘the white,’ that is, an ordinary wedding dress. Then all people present go to take a picture in a photographer’s studio, also usually on foot, covering the distance of several kilometers, sometimes along a very worn-down road. After that the celebration resumes and lasts as long as guests have energy and hosts have treats.

Wedding customs undoubtedly vary a little from village to village and are completely forgotten in some places. Sometimes, the bride puts on the Hutsul costume and participates in a complicated two- or three- hour procedure only to invite the guests. That is, the bride accompanied with her bridesmaids, who also wear national costumes, visit the nearest prospective guests to invite them to the wedding. Occasionally the ceremony can last for 10-12 hours. Later, after returning home and putting on ‘the white,’ the bride goes to the marriage ceremony.

As for keeping ancient traditions, the situation can sometimes be quite paradoxical: The more remote the village, the sooner the people forget ancestral traditions and customs and try to do everything in a modern way. However, even at a quiet modem wedding, now and then one can see elements of ancient traditions that look a little odd here, for instance, presenting cattle as a gift to the newly married couple.

As a rule, the Hutsul traditions and rites are most strictly observed in places where local residents have undergone certain influences from the outside. For instance, in the village of Kryvorivnya, the writer Ivan Franko had vacations rather often. In the 19th and 20th centuries many representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia came to vacation there, bringing to local residents the idea that ancient customs and traditions were of tremendous value and were to be kept and continued. A similar situation was in the villages where public enlightenment societies functioned, or intellectuals from Kyiv worked at schools.

The choice between the Hutsul and ‘white’ clothes to be worn at the ceremony is most often up to the bride and bridegroom. Only a few parents try to influence their children’s decision, arguing that putting on the Hutsul clothes for the marriage ceremony is a sign of special chic and family prosperity, for handmade national clothes cost quite a lot of money. However, if you have enough mon­ey, it is not difficult to find and buy them, since folk artisans pass their skills from generation to generation and keep them sacred.

The traditional wedding folklore is a different story though: Usu­ally, special songs are performed at weddings by old women in their 70s or 80s. When these women are gone, there will be no one to sing, for the majority of young people do not know these songs. They are worth keeping as something of the greatest value, the loss of which is almost a crime and not just a little disappointment. This is a great and fertile field for folklorists who are to gather and keep ancient verses and melodies, not only for us, but so that our children and grandchildren will be able to listen to them. So that girls at the end of the 21st century will also be able to wear Hutsul and other national costumes to the accompaniment of ancient folk melodies and take pride in being married in accordance with the same customs as their grandmothers.

Hutsul wedding vocabulary

zapaska – a woolen weaved skirt made of two pieces

keptar – a decorated short sleeveless sheepskin coat

kalachi – dough rolls

troyisti muzyky – a band of folk musicians playing tsymbaly, violin and tambourine

tsymbaly – a traditional Hutsul string instrument

Hutsulka – a folk dance

banosh – corn porridge boiled in sour cream

brynza – dried sheep’s milk cheese grinded with salt

Video of Hutsul wedding