Yet another different wedding, that confirms that weddings are still events where the deep roots of the culture remain. This time, I attended a wedding in Stockholm between a Swede guy and a Persian girl, and even though it took place in Stockholm, the wedding was mainly Persian in terms of traditions.
Again, a good number of differences raised from the first minute of the wedding. Nice setup in front of a beautiful landscape in Stockholm’s archipielago, and the altar ready for the event. Here, we could see the first differences.
The altar cloth is called Sofreh, and it is a very luxurious element which is transmitted from one generation to the next one, and with lots of elements with a special meaning on them:
The bride and the groom then sit facing the mirror (and the guests) during the whole ceremony. Apart from different texts which are read, more symbols and traditions appear here. For example, the groom is asked once whether he wants to marry (which he normally answers ‘yes’), and then the bride gets the same question… several times, as she does not answer in first instance. Once she answers positively, all women (please note, only women) start making a joy noise and they are married.
Before that, two women had held a scarf over the bride’s and groom’s heads, and a third one rubs the suger cones on it symbolizing sweet joy and happiness. Once they are married, the bride and the groom moisten their fingers with the honey and place it on each other’s mouth, symbolizing the sweetness and the closeness of their marriage.
After the ceremony is over, the dinner and the party begins. And again, as in the Bulgarian wedding (and unlike the Spanish ones), these two elements are not consecutive, but parallel. After 10 minutes of dinner, guests are dancing like crazy (hard to beat the Persians on this), and you just had a small salad! During the dinner, the Swedish part raised for a while in form of speeches, which become more challenging when half of the audience speak Persian and the other half Swedish. Another Swedish factor was the guest distribution on tables, as each table was composed composed of both bride’s and groom’s guests, which makes also a significant difference with other countries’.
The problems that the groom had to get the “Yes” from the bride during the ceremony had a repetition with the wedding cake. They got the cake, but the knife was to be obtained by him from women related to the bride… so they start dancing around with the knife, and he tempted them with money… which they took, ran away, and the next woman repeated the operation. It took him at least 5 to 10 minutes to finally get it, and a couple of swedish kronor.
Short “stop and go” in the capital of Slovakia coming from a customer meeting. Nice old town, next to the river and with a castle on a hill… just surprised of seeing in a place less than 100 km from Vienna the signs shown in the last picture in this post.
After a couple of extremely busy weeks, let’s retake the posting activity by sharing some pictures from the local festivities of Alicante: Hogueras de San Juan. Taking the example of the prominent Valencia’s Fallas, but enjoying much better weather (end of June next at the seaside).
More pictures in this slideshow.
