The wedding act in Serbia in the light of social changes: A study of traditional and contemporary ceremony

Abstract

Traditional form of getting married included wedding ceremony in which we had, among other rituals, obligatory church wedding. Church wedding was omitted in certain cases, as it was, for example, marriage of underage partners. When transformation of traditional life begun, church wedding was omitted more often, though it was still norm (in traditional and civilian law). In this period, traditional wedding ceremony was considered as popular way of marking the start of new wedding community. At the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century, the civilian ceremony of getting married was introduced, but most of couples still got married in church. This was custom until The Second World War, when the church form of wedding became undesirable. Communist ideology meant the complete breaking up with religious and national traditions. This brought to the reduction of numbers of church weddings, but not to their complete leaving. Economic crises, war destructions, low life standards and disturbance of system of values, at the end of 20th cent resulted in retraditionalisation processes as for instance, revitalization of church life, or some of it’s elements. Last few years in Serbia, young couples approach both the civilian marriage -because it is an obligation and the church marriage -because of different reasons: need to make continuity with historical heritage, or to invent new one. I will try to show this course of transformation of act of getting married, through analyses of social meaning of some wedding ceremony elements.