What are some of the traditions you will use

[MustangFan]

I''m curious of all the different cultures, and the unusal tradtions that are performed that are less common. Anyone doing non-American traditions at their wedding?

Traditional Russian/German wedding last three day, normally held on a friday, another party of saturday and sunday is the day of rest

I am about 75% German, my father escaped East Germany in the 50''s
My FI is about 90% Russian and 10% Polish

We will be doing customary traditions- The veil dance it''s called in Germany (dollar dance here ) paying a fee to dance with the bride.

Bread and salt tradition, the grooms parents bring bread to the bride and groom as a symbol of long healthy lives together. Whomever takes the biggest bite from the bread is the head of the household!!

plates and dishes are smashed in a tradition called Poltrabend. The broken pieces are thought to bring good luck to the couple. The couple must then clean up the broken pieces together, symbolizing that nothing will be broken in their house again.

My aunt was telling me about this, people come to trash your house, they still actually do this!

 

[regalada]

Mustangfan, my hubby is also East German, so we incorporated a few German traditions in our wedding last October.

It is tradition that the first thing the couple does after the ceremony is chop a big piece of wood together. Chopping the big piece of wood was not viewed favorably by our hotel, so my SIL came up with her own version of the first activity together. She drew a big red heart on a blue bedsheet and brought that with her when she came to our wedding from Germany. When hubby and I stepped into the reception room, she handed us scissors and her and her boyfriend held up the sheet. We were told to cut the heart out and then hubby should carry me through the hole.

It was a hilarious moment in the wedding because hubby got really small scissors while I got large ones, so I was way ahead of him in the cutting as you can see in the attached pictures, and our guests were cheering him on.

 

[Independent Gal]

Hey Mustang, I heard that at the Poltrabend the groom''s friends are supposed to kidnap you and hold you for ransom too! For BOOZE! Maybe that''s just a Bavarian thing, though.

Sounds like a rowdy, not to be missed evening to me. But hide the fine china! (And the danburite!)

 

[MustangFan]

Ind--
LOL you''re too funny
yes, they are all a bunch of booze-a-holics!!

sorry again about the danburite!!

 

[oshinbreez]

Date: 4/26/2007 11:53:48 AM
Author: Independent Gal
Hey Mustang, I heard that at the Poltrabend the groom''s friends are supposed to kidnap you and hold you for ransom too! For BOOZE! Maybe that''s just a Bavarian thing, though.

My dad was of German decent, and his groomsmen kidnapped mom. That was 54 years ago

 

[wolftress]

FI and I have to kneel and serve our parents tea in a traditional chinese tea ceremony. Our parents will give us red evelopes of money as a symbol of prosperity and acceptance of our marriage.

As it''s not an Australian tradition and FI''s parents (who are Caucasian) are already giving us other wedding gifts, we told them to write a little note wishing us well for our wedding and put that in the red packet.

 

[Snow White]

Hi MustangFan!

I ''m gonna have a German-French Wedding in 6 weeks and we are also planning a polteraband on the Friday evening, with many china plates to break

The rest of the weekend will be more french with Church and cocktail on the saturday afternoon, diner and party in the night and Hudge BBQ party on Sunday.

We traditionnaly offer bread and salt for house-warming parties.

I love your topic, please go ahead describing your traditions

Snow White

 

[bee*]

We dont have any main wedding traditions in Ireland, apart from the wedding will go on till about 4 am the next morning! Its a long day!

 

[ladyciel]

Hehe, I have no idea where the idea comes from, but I just read about something called the Truce Bell. A little bell is rung during the ceremony to mark the bride and groom''s happiest day. Then, the bell is placed in a central location of their home. Anytime they have a fight, one of them can ring the bell to call a truce - the idea is for it to remind them of their happiness to help bring the argument to a swift close.

This made me about die laughing, because I can just see it being nicknamed the "Guilt Bell" (you can''t be mad at me anymore, because it would dishonor our wedding day!), or the "I''m in Deep S&$# Bell" (please forget what I did, please forgive me, just please stop yelling at me!).

Or, in the case of my FFI, probably the "Can we pretend it''s our wedding night??" Bell.