Sorry for letting you wait this long time, but here comes some details about wedding ceremonies in Finland.
Engagement: In Finland both parties will receive an engagement ring, which is usually unadorned and plain, albeit often made of gold, white gold or sometimes, especially on the countryside - of birch bark. Very often the rings are similar, except for the size and maybe the width. Especially in the Orthodox tradition, where I belong to, engagement is confirmed in the church.
The banns of marriage: I have seen in American tv series and films, that the priest asks everyone in the beginning of wedding ceremony if anyone has something against the marriage of those 2 who are getting married. Now, this doesn't happen here in Finland. Here both persons go to the vicarian office or to the register office in the case that the other one does not belong either to Lutheran, Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Anglican Church. There they fill in an official form where are asked their names, social security numbers, addresses, possible previous spouses etc and finally they sign it. After that, the public officers check 4 things:
1) that the details given by them are right
2) that the wedding couple are not relatives with each other
3) that neither of the wedding couple are not married with anybody else
4) that there are not other possible obstacles for marrying them.
After everything is ready, the couple has 3 months time to get married with each other. If it takes longer, the same procedure must be done again.
When the couple knows the date when they want to get married, they must take contact with the priest or register officer whom they want to wed them.
One very important thing is that Finland is one of the few countries, where you don't have to confirm the ecclesiastical matrimony in register office, it is has taken place in a Lutheran or Orthodox church, which are the 2 national churches in Finland. In Lutheran church, when bride's father is walking her daughter to the altar, the music is nearly always The Wedding March by Erkki Melartin:
In Orthodox Church there are times when you can't be married without bishop's permission. Those times are: Great Lent (= 7 weeks before Easter), Easter, Christmas Lent and Christmas Period (= November 15th - January 6th), Lent of Apostles (starts 7 weeks from Easter and ends on June 29th, the day of St. Peter & Paul) and Lent of Virgin Mary (August 1st - August 15th, the day of Dormition of Virgin Mary). In Lutheran church there are not similar restrictions, I think.
The wedding ceremony is everywhere in the Christian world more or less similar I think, so I won't talk about it here. Anyway, to secure a happy, long marriage, the bride should were something old, something new, something stolen and something blue. And of course it should rain a lot, because raindrops mean lots of money, children and happy years.
Reception follows the wedding ceremony and usually everyone are there before the just married wedding couple, because they go to be photographed as soon as the wedding ceremony is over. All ceremonies are a little bit different kind of ones, depending what kind of people the wedding couple and their parents are. There are some common things though: lots of eating and drinking, wedding waltz, abduction of the bride and collecting money from the guests to get the bride back (if wanted
). Sometimes during the reception the just married leaved the guests and start spending their wedding night or travel somewhere.
This is the most usual wedding waltz nowadays: The Wedding Waltz of Akseli and Elina, composed by Heikki Aaltoila
If there is anything more to ask, feel free to ask it.
