There is an absurd Russian tradition to "buy out the bride". The idea behind it, is to give the groom as much trouble as possible before he reacher his wife-to be. I believe this all originated in some classical ideology of the man demonstrating his strength/wit/masculinity for all to see. In the more modern version-it is just there for laughs. The bridesmaids usually greet the groom, before he enters the house/flat the bride lives in. The "buying out the bride" procedure presents every groom a unique opportunity to show his love for all to see. Whether he will need to scream "Darling I love you" for hundrets to hear, or to say 15 compliments about his bride- this is his opportunity to show that the sky is the limit. The bridesmaids also have a field day, because this one day-they are able to get the groom and his friends to do whatever they please.With all possible tricks and games, they try to get him to pay as much money as possible, in order to get to his bride. Some of the most common dares include:
1) The groom is offered three containers,filled with clear liquid. One of them contains sugar, the other salt and the third something bitter. The one the groom picks and tastes is supposed to signify their marriage-would it be sweet or biter.
2)Every stair has a flower laid on it, as the groom picks up the flower he is supposed to say a kind word about his bride (beautiful, sexy, funny), if he runs out of words he pays up.
3)The groom is supposed to spell out the name of the bride with cash notes on the ground (lucky someone called Veronika, or Aleksandra!)
4) A tub of water is put before the groom, and he is asked to put the that which the bride cherishes the most in it (the groom needs to be smart enough to take his shoes off and step into the tub himself)
5)The groom is required to answer all sorts of rediculous questions, ranging from "what was the colour of the dress that she was wearing when you met" to "what is the star sign of the future mother in law"
6)A poster is prepared,covered in kisses of different colours. The groom must correctly guess which colour lipstick belongs to his bride (or pay money!)
The list of competitions and tricks is endless. They are always fun and make it onboard every Russian wedding. I can assure you my girls had a fielday getting bikers to sing Britney Spears Songs.. :)
aw i remember we made them spell your name! using their own bodies as shapes. it was fun to see a bunch of bikers do some ballerina moves!
ReplyDeletei also loved the fact that they had to drink 3 jugs of water to get the right key and open the door:P our aim was the get them all so bloated so they dunt realise how much they r paying:P
Too bad you forgot to wash the key before dropping it in... :)
ReplyDeleteYAY for another post!!!! These are absolutely hilarious traditions and I just loved reading them! So bikers were singing Britney Spears?!Oh Man, I gotta see THAT! LOL So how much groom eventually gave out? In terms of money? LOL Mean, mean bridesmades! LOL
ReplyDeleteMy husband tried to be smart about it, he changed the money into very very small cash notes (200 soums=0.2 buks)and paid out with those. So whilst it looked like he payed a whole pile of money for me, it actually turned out to be just 15 dollars :) (20,000 soums)
ReplyDeleteHe paid in coins too...
OMG! Lol is smart and he is a keeper! :) Hahahaha... and who kept money?
ReplyDeleteOh good question! Someone owes us 15 buks! He he!
ReplyDeleteI dont know it probably went for little things throughout the day!
haha :) hilarious tradition :))
ReplyDeletei remember on my wedding day my husband had to spell my name with notes. after he did so diligently, my friends told him that he has to spell it in russian and not in english :) and that he must use cyrillic. imagine his torture trying to remember how to spell russian "Д" :)))
That is cruel :) Poor guy! They must have warned him beforehand! The only torture Leshka had was trying to remember at least 4 movies that we watched in the cinema together :)
ReplyDeletehaha no they didn't warn him. but he studied russian once upon a time and knows cyrillic. and he better know how to spell his future wife's name, right? :))
ReplyDeletebtw he and his friends (all malaysians) also changed money into smaller notes so that it seems like there is more money :)