Wedding Customs
Written for Virtual Finland by Sirpa Karjalainen, Research Assistant,
Department of Ethnology, University of Helsinki
On an
early summer evening in Finland, you may witness the unexpected
sight of a group of young men or women roaming about in public
places with one of their contemporaries in tow. He or she is a
future bride or bridegroom, usually wearing a mask and often
only partly clothed, peddling dubious services, scribbling down
advice on life and amusing the rest of the party while
bewildering passers-by. Early summer is the most popular time
for weddings in Finland and the groups are giving one of their
number a rousing send-off to married life.
The fashion
spread rapidly in the 1980s, having earlier been a ritual known
only to small circles in urban areas. The spreading popularity
of these pre-nuptial amusements was not an inexplicable
phenomenon. Following a rejection of ritual in the 1970s, people
in Finland were quickly regaining a taste for fun with style.
After a considerable lapse, it became fashionable again to add
some chic to weddings and other family occasions. Finland
followed an international trend which was thought to have been
sparked off by the fairy-tale wedding of Prince Charles and
Princess Diana in 1981.
Although people now spend more money and go to more trouble to
arrange weddings than they did a couple of decades ago, all
weddings are by no means equally lavish. Annually, some 24,000
marriages are solemnized in
Finland, some modest, some opulent. The two extremes are the
fairy-tale wedding, with hundreds of guests, or a visit to the
local administrative court with two witnesses.
Folk
Customs and Ecclesiastical Rule
In earlier times, a marriage was based on an agreement between
two families. An engagement was confirmed with a handshake and
the wedding sealed the link between the two families. The
history of wedding customs is more than an account of folk
traditions. The rules of the church and Lutheran observance have
also influenced the way a marriage was solemnized.
Engagement presents have been exchanged since pre-Christian
times. In 1686, ecclesiastical law made an engagement a legally
binding agreement. In fact, the engagement marked the beginning
of conjugal life for couples in rural areas. In Scandinavia,
engagement rings became fashionable among the gentry in the 16th
century. For poorer country folk a handshake sufficed as
confirmation of an engagement.
With the reform of the Marriage Act in 1988, the engagement
lost its legal validity although it still lives on as a
tradition. Moreover, the significance of the engagement is
changing. Today, rings might be bought and worn on the ring
finger as a sign of ‘going steady’. An engagement no longer
necessarily indicates an intention to marry.
Orthodox Wedding.
Church weddings were compulsory from the 18th century until
1917, when civil marriages became acceptable before the law.
Currently, 86% of Finns belong to the Lutheran Church and almost all church members want a church wedding. One
couple in five prefer a civil ceremony. Religious wedding
ceremonies are usually held in a church or chapel but they
sometimes take place in private homes or at the place of the
wedding reception. Those with a liking for the unusual can get
married in a snow castle or a chapel in a shopping centre.
A comparison between modern practices and old country wedding
ceremonies illustrates the special features of Finnish wedding
customs. The comparison is meaningful since Finland’s agrarian past is surprisingly close. Until the end of
the 19th century, nine out of ten Finns earned their living from
rural occupations.
Wedding Festivities and Social Class
In rural communities a marriage was not founded on romantic
considerations but rather on economic arrangements. Property
changed hands and ties between families were strengthened
through marriage. Parents had much influence on the choice of
spouse.
Weddings provided an opportunity to display wealth and social
status. Rural wedding festivities often lasted for several days,
with celebrations taking place at both the bride’s and the
groom’s home. In rural areas weddings were timed for the autumn
and the Christmas period because there was then time off from
farm work and food was more plentiful than at other times of the
year. Pre-nuptial preparations called for professional helpers:
among them were matchmakers, bride’s dressers, cooks and
minstrels.
The brightly colored folk costume of the Lapps is still in use
today as wedding attire. The traditional silver jewelry reflects
the bride's wealth.
The lavish wedding celebrations enjoyed by freeholders could
last for up to two weeks. Western Finnish "crown" weddings, so
named because of the decorative crown worn by the bride, were
particularly spectacular. The wedding procession passed through
an arch of honor on its way into the festive home. The bride and
groom were married under a canopy, known as the bridal sky. The
wedding room was decorated with weavings, garlands, straw
ornaments, mirrors and goodwill messages. Weddings culminated in
feasting and dancing. Minstrel music set the rhythm of the
revels and the pace could be so hectic that the exhausted bride
might need a stand-in after several days of dancing.
Not all could afford, or even wanted, that type of wedding. In
many parts of the country religious revivalist movements
restrained the celebrations. Instead of dancing, hymns were sung
and the bridal couple’s modest clothing revealed their religious
conviction.
Poor people, such as farm hands and servant girls, were
married in the vicarage, the wedding ceremony being followed by
a dance in which the guests could take part for a small charge.
Sometimes money was collected for the newly-weds. On payment of
a small fee, male wedding guests could dance with the bride. The
Orthodox Christian tradition, with its ritualistic wedding
laments, colored wedding festivities in the eastern parts of
Finland.
In the course of the 19th century, the social differences in
Finnish society grew deeper. This division was reflected in
wedding customs. The weddings of the gentry, who formed a small
minority, were clearly influenced by trends in continental
Europe.
Gradually, the fashions and international wedding customs of the
gentry spread to all sectors of the population. The basis of
marriage also changed. Romantic love replaced economic
considerations in determining the choice of a spouse.
New Festivities, Old Traditions
Marriage marks the most important turning point of adulthood.
In the lives of most Finns, their wedding remains a unique
experience. Despite the increase in the divorce rate, 87% of
Finnish married couples today continue to live in the first
marriage of both partners.
Although people recall their wedding day all their lives,
without exception the occasion is recorded in a more concrete
form. For over a century, couples have been immortalized in
wedding photo-graphs. The pictures register changes in clothing
and customs as well as changes in familial patterns and values.
Today, a wedding almost never marks the beginning of a
couple’s life together or the establishment of a home, and is
never the product of an agreement between the spouses’ families.
Most couples have lived together for years before they get
married.
The wedding no longer means the start of a relationship
between a couple but rather its culmination, a fresh stimulus in
an everyday life that may have become routine. It is quite
common for the bridal couple’s own daughters to act as
bridesmaids, their sons as attendants. Celebrities, from sports
heroes to pop stars, show the way to the general public.
In the past, the bride’s family used to arrange and pay for
the wedding. Today, the couple themselves cover the costs or
share them with their parents. The couple plan the festivities
according to their own wishes. Wealth or social standing seldom
decide what kind of wedding the couple are going to have. The
determining factors are more likely to be the couple’s view of
life, their values and personal preferences. The number of
wedding guests may be as high as in an old country wedding but
instead of villagers and relatives the guests are now the
couple’s immediate family and contemporaries. Weddings today are
occasions arranged for two circles of friends rather than two
families.
In many cases, Finnish bridal couples today are the children
of couples who were married in the 1960s and ‘70s. In those
days, couples almost competed to show how modest and
unceremonious a wedding could be. In the aftermath of the
economic boom of the 1980s, attitudes changed. After a long
hiatus, announcements of engagements, weddings and births again
began to appear in newspapers.
The descendants of brides in Mari-mekko dresses and grooms in
blue jeans wanted to dress up in veils and lace and tail coats.
However, the arrangement of a dream wedding requires more than a
little effort. Guidebooks and magazines devoted to weddings sell
well and wedding fairs attract a growing number of visitors
every year.
Princess For a Day
Today’s weddings must be impressive, innovative and, above
all, they must display tradition. Although authentic, indigenous
traditions are in favor, they may equally well be borrowed or
invented ones. Many of the customs adopted in Finland this
century, from throwing rice to cutting the wedding cake and
casting the bride’s bouquet, stem from British or Anglo-American
sources. The modern Finnish bride knows that she has to wear
something old, something new, something borrowed and something
blue. The wedding limousine is equipped with rattling tin cans
and the groom carries his bride across the threshold. For the
modern Finn, these represent ‘genuine old traditions’, although
they are relatively new, imported rituals that have been
assimilated from films, women’s magazines and popular
literature.
Alongside the exotic fashions, homespun customs do still
flourish. The Anglo-American best man is accompanied by a
genuine Finnish kaaso. Unlike earlier days, she is no longer a
professional dresser but the bride’s best friend.
Features
originating from the old rural weddings include dancing with the
bride or placing a boy child momentarily on the bride’s lap for
a fee. In addition, an ideal wedding requires a genuine Finnish
idyllic backdrop: a cloudless early summer’s day, a picturesque
wooden church, a lakeside setting complete with silver birches.
The priest’s "Amen" signifies little change to a couple who
have already lived together for a long time, but the popularity
of wedding festivities reflects the fact that marriage is still
considered an important milestone in the journey through life. A
modern wedding can be characterized as a display rite. This is
emphasized at every stage of the proceedings. The newly-weds
step out of the church first, cut the cake first and start the
wedding waltz. Only the bride is allowed to wear white and only
the groom has a flower in his lapel.
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