Bride Leaving the Home

Title: Bride Leaving the Home

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Customary Folklore: Superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country: Greece

Informant Data:

  • Mary Wallenmeyer is a 55 year-old woman from Shermans Dale, PA. Both of her parents, her two sisters, and her one brother were born in Greece. Her parents were raised in a small village in the mountains of central Greece. Her father came to the U.S. first and worked for two years so he could bring the rest of the family to America. She was born a year after her parents were reunited in the U.S., and her younger brother was born seven years later. Her father and his siblings are deceased, but she still have cousins from his side of the family that live in Greece. Her mother has six siblings still living in Greece along with their families.  Growing up, Mary and her family spoke Greek at home and attended Greek classes. Her husband and children do not speak the language fluently, but they do understand some of it. Her family belongs to the Greek Orthodox church, which she says “ helps keep the ‘Greek’ alive in [their] lives.” Their family still prays in Greek and cooks many Greek foods. They are very proud of their Greek heritage.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: This superstition only applies to a bride on her wedding day. The family who help her get ready participate in the superstition by being sure to leave before her, but otherwise it mainly applies to the bride herself.
  • Cultural Context: There are multiple superstitions around weddings, as they are a very important event for Greeks. Marriage is one of the seven sacraments of the Greek Orthodox Religion and therefore is very ceremonial and traditional. Especially in earlier times in Greece, it was very important to a family that the daughters be married off, so any superstition involving the bride is critical.

Item:

  • On a bride’s wedding day, the bride had to be the last one out of the house. And along with that, the bride was supposed to be fully dressed for the wedding when she stepped out of her “singles” home for the last time. As a bride, she is starting a new life, and it is important that she closes the door on her old life so she can start her new life fresh. Without doing this, her new life will not truly have started and will not feel right. The grooms sometimes do it too, but it is much more significant for the brides.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

  • None

Transcript of Associated File:

  • None

Informant’s Comments:

  • None

Collector’s Comments:

  • None

Collector’s Name:

  • Collected and published by Katie Spanos

Tags/Keywords:

  • Greek superstitions, bride, wedding, home, new life, marriage

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