All About Amish Weddings
Marriage and family are the cornerstones of any Amish community. Deeply rooted in religious faith and traditional values, the Amish wedding is an important part of every Amish member’s life and allows the community to continue to grow as it has for hundreds of years. However, an Amish wedding is not the same as a traditional American wedding and Amish boys and girls begin preparing for the day they will wed when they are still teenagers.
Finding a mate and starting a family is the most important decision an Amish person must make in order to keep the Amish community strong. All Amish children are expected to find a spouse, start a family, and begin contributing to the Amish community as a whole by the time they are in their early twenties. Amish children are not baptized into the Amish church until they are young adults because they are required to make the decision to stay in the Amish community and follow the Amish rules on their own. Once an Amish boy or girl decides to stay with the Amish community, they are baptized into the Amish church and are then expected to marry and begin living their lives as adults.
Once an Amish couple has been dating for a while and finally decides that they should get married, there is no engagement ring or party. During this time of dating and engagement, everything is kept very secret in the Amish community, even from the engaged couples’ own parents and siblings. This is a common practice in Amish households and official announcement to the families of their intention to marry are usually made around July or August. The Amish community itself will not be told of the pending union until a month before the wedding will take place when the engagement is announced in church or published in the Amish community newspaper. Some Amish communities have a specific Sunday set aside in October where the church deacon announces all the Amish couples who plan to marry and the fathers’ of the brides announce the dates that have been chosen for the ceremonies. Most Amish weddings take place in November or December, after the harvesting season is over, and Tuesdays or Thursdays are popular days of the week to get married because a full day before and after are needed to prepare for the Amish wedding and this can never include a Sunday.
An Amish bride will usually make her own wedding dress out of blue or sometimes purple fabric. The Amish bride chooses two attendants who will also make their dresses out of the same cloth of fabric. All three women will wear Amish prayer capes and aprons. It is also general practice that an Amish woman will be dressed in her wedding dress, cape, and apron once she dies. The Amish groom and his two attendants will wear black suits, white shirts, black brimmed hats, black high-topped boots, and black bow ties. There are no wedding rings, flowers, or veils during the Amish wedding ceremony.
The day before the Amish wedding is performed, married couples in the Amish community assist the bride in preparing the food for the wedding celebration. This is one of the few days where the Amish men assist the women in the kitchen. On the day of the Amish wedding, everyone gathers at the bride’s home and an early morning church service is held where the couple will exchange their vows. Divorce is not allowed in an Amish community, so the importance of the union and the ceremony is made very clear to the parties involved. The Amish wedding ceremony usually involves the church minister counseling the young couple, making sure they understand the permanence of the ceremony, hymnals are sung, scriptures are read, and a long sermon is usually conducted. The Amish couple is then asked to make their vows, the couple is blessed, and a final prayer is said to end the ceremony.
After the ceremony, around noontime, the party and feasting begins. Typical Amish wedding day meals include roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, salads, creamed celery, cheese, bologna, bread, butter, honey, jelly, fruits, pudding, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Tables are set up around the perimeter of the largest room in the Amish home and a special table, called an Eck, is set up in the corner for the bridal party. The Amish bride sits to the left of her Amish groom, symbolizing where she will sit in their marriage buggy. The single Amish women of the community will sit on the bride’s side of the room and the single Amish men will sit on the groom’s side. The couples’ parents and siblings will typically sit together in the kitchen.
After this first meal, the rest of the afternoon will usually involve talking, singing, and game playing. Sometimes an Amish wedding celebration is used as an opportunity for matchmaking between teenagers who are over the age of 16 and are assigned specific seats before the evening meal in order to bring them closer together. Very few gifts are given to a newly married Amish couple at their wedding. Usually just the closest family members or friends provide the couple with practical gifts, such as Amish quilts, tablecloths, canned foods, or farming tools. A second meal is served around sundown where the bride, groom, and their parents now sit in the middle of the room at the main table and the same type of food is served again. Most Amish wedding celebrations usually go on late into the night.
The newlywed Amish couple will then spend their first night in the bride’s home in order to help with the cleanup the next morning. The Amish do not go on honeymoons, but they do spend the next several months spending the night or weekend with different Amish family members on both sides of the family in order to get to know each other. It is during this time that the Amish couple may receive gifts, such as dishes, cookware, or other household items that will be useful to them in their new lives together. The couple then will live with the Amish bride’s family for the rest of the winter and will begin setting up their new marital home in the spring. The Amish bride’s family will usually provide the new couple a dowry which might include major appliances and the household furnishings. Other items will be given to them over the winter by other family members and all of the acquired household items will be used to furnish the Amish couple’s new home.
