Thread: Wedding Celebrations

I am was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. My maternal great-grandmother was a widow from Moscow and her only child was my gradmother. The story was that they moved to Eastern Ukraine during the Russian Revolution or right before it. Anyway, sometime afterwards they illegally crossed over mountians into Czechoslovakia. There my grandmother married my grandfather and my mother was born. Then they immigrated to the United States. 1st to New York, 2nd to Tenneesee, 3rd to California. Then I was born. My mother was pretty Americanized. She went through the whole 70s and bad perm 80s. She and my father had me in 1979. In High school I think I may have been a pretty girl. I had a lot of suitors from many different backgrounds. I was an equal opportunity teenage gril who cared most for the inner beauty within people. A boy also had to be intelligent if he wanted to date me. I remember my first kiss was Polish boy that lived next door to my friend. I had to break it off right after he kissed me because it was very unromantic. Even though we are friends to this day I never did forgive him for ruining my 1st kiss. My 1st "real" love was a Russian boy. He was somewhat new to the United States. Like my grandmother, he had Lukemia and we became very close. We were married very young. I demanded and begged to marry him and our parents actually agreed to it. (To our suriprise.) We actually went to Russia to get married. I was 16 and he was 19. Our son was born when I was 17. His father passed away a few months before. My oldest child and I have a very special and strong bond. When he was born it was the happiest day off my life. I am so happy that he looks and reminds me so much of his father! It's like his father will always be with us!

I was wanting to ask about Russian wedding traditions. We were married in the Orthodox church. My father is Irish and my mother is considered Czech. They are both Catholic. Orthodox and Catholic's both consider marriage a sacred sacrament and the wedding process is very similar. Russian wedding celebration was different from anything I had experienced from American weddings though. Like when they lock the groom out and make him drink until he nearly pees his pants. What is that all about? Or is that just something our crazy family and friends wanted to do? Also, I remember my grandmother saying something about bread and pumpkins. Like when a boy ask a girl to marry and she gives him a pumpkin it means that she is saying yes or no... I wasn't really paying attention (nervous excitement and all). I wish I did! Does anyone know what that means? Or what she was talking about? Where is the elephant? That was my favorite smiley...

Originally Posted by MrsKlug

Also, I remember my grandmother saying something about bread and pumpkins. Like when a boy ask a girl to marry and she gives him a pumpkin it means that she is saying yes or no... I wasn't really paying attention (nervous excitement and all). I wish I did! Does anyone know what that means? Or what she was talking about?

I don't know whether it was a real tradition or not but it was mocked in a comedy movie "Maksim Perepelitsa" (imdb, wiki-rus). A young man when going to serve in army sent a pumpkin to every other young man in the village pretending that it was sent by his girl-friend to make all the young men to think that his girl-friend doesn't like any of them. So he wanted to be sure that she would wait him and would not have any affairs with someone else.

Ha Ha okay... so maybe a pumpkim will mean a negative response to a wedding proposal probably. That is the name of the movie? Maybe I can try to watch it sometime. My Russian is not that great. But, I can try. And maybe it will have subtitles, like a lot of movies now do.

Originally Posted by MrsKlug

That is the name of the movie?

Yes, the movie is named after the name of the main character "Maksim Perepelitsa" (Максим Перепелица, 1955).