Overview of the wedding ceremony in Ukraine

In human life folk wisdom highlight three important events: birth, marriage and death, or saying that a man three times is funny, when born, marry and die. These three events were accompanied most rites and beliefs.

Wedding time had most important meaning, because this ceremony was preceded a preparation phase with their specific rituals, marriage, ohlyadyny, engagements, stories, wedding invitation, baking loaf, and virgin-evening.

Our ancestors had a range of prohibitions that nobody allowed to cross. The new family was to be based on honesty, integrity, truthfulness. Divorce was considered as a sin, because young people preparing for marriage, had weigh all the circumstances to make future marriage life happy. Strict compliance with the relevant requirements of all the rituals must ensure adherence of the fate to a young family.

Wedding ceremony, which polished during ages, forever hid Ukrainian views on marriage, family, genus and extension. It is closely intertwined and profound event, music and dramatic action. During the course of this action we can get full imagination not only of the relationship, Ukrainian views on the role of family in life, the organization of family life but social relations too.

The forming process of traditional Ukrainian wedding ceremonies, like in many other nations, established a long time. Wedding rituals and give a broad imagination of moral, ethical, esthetic views of the people, various aspects of life.

With the development of ethnographic science since the nineteenth century, there are series of detailed ethnographic descriptions of wedding. Of great importance to the knowledge of the marriage ceremony have works of Lozynsky J. I., PP Chubynsky; the interesting observations and scientific findings came in the work of Ohrimovych ' Value of wedding and ceremonial songs in history and evolution of Family' (1891). Polish researchers also studied wedding rites. I. Lubicz-Chervinsky significant contribution made known folklorist and ethnographer A. Kolberg in his books '\\ \\ Volyn' (1964), 'ViaIorus-PoIesie' (1968), 'Pokucie' (1882-1889), 'Chelmskie' (1882-1891), revealing a broad picture of life and rites of Ukrainian population . A significant place was dedicated to the characteristic of wedding ceremony of Ukrainian people, late nineteenth-early twentieth century in historical and ethnographic study of O.M. Kravets 'Family life and customs of Ukrainian people' (Kyiv, 1966).

Origin Ukrainian rite, historical forms of marriages are considered by NI Zdorovehov in his monograph 'Features folk marriage ceremony in Ukraine' (Kyiv, 1974), study of F .Vovk 'Marriage ritual in Ukraine' (Kyiv. 1994, reprint edition).