Orthodox weddings
The Bulgarian Orthodox wedding service
A Bulgarian wedding is the Slavic form of the rite on a new-calendar year, with a kum holding the crowns and a threshold full of customs that happen after the couple have already left the church.
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What is different here
The same rite, celebrated this way
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, represented in North America by the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese and by the Bulgarian Diocese of the Orthodox Church in America.
The service is the Slavic recension, so the priest asks the questions of consent and the crowns are metal ones held above the couple. Bulgarian chant is a distinct tradition with its own notation, and in some parishes it is sung in the harmonised style that Western listeners associate with Bulgarian choirs generally, which gives the hymns during the procession an unmistakable colour.
Bulgaria was the first Slavic country to receive the liturgy in a Slavic language, and Bulgarian parishes are conscious of that history. It shows up less in the wedding than you might expect, because the service itself is the common Byzantine one, but it does shape how a parish talks about what it is doing.
North American Bulgarian parishes are relatively few and often small, and a number of Bulgarians in the United States attend OCA or Greek parishes for want of a nearer option. If that is your situation, the wedding will be celebrated according to whichever parish you are in, and the Bulgarian customs go on around it.
Kum and kuma
Said koom / KOO-mah
Bulgarian practice uses a kum, usually with his wife as kuma, to hold the crowns and to stand as the couple’s sponsor. The relationship, kumstvo, is taken seriously and normally carries on into the baptism of the couple’s children, though it is not inherited between families with the rigour that Serbian practice gives it. At the reception the kum has a working role as well: he is expected to lead the toasts, keep the evening moving, and pay for a set of things that vary by region and that nobody will explain to him until the day.
Metal crowns, held by the kum and kuma
Closed metal crowns in the Slavic pattern, belonging to the parish and held above the couple’s heads through the readings, the cup and the procession. Bulgarian crowns are frequently older than the parish that owns them, because so many were carried across by founding families, and in a small diaspora congregation the pair in the cupboard is often the only pair for several states.
The language of the service
Bulgarian and Church Slavonic, with English used in proportion to the congregation. Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic and is close enough to Church Slavonic that a Bulgarian speaker follows most of the service without difficulty, which is not something a Greek or Romanian guest can say about their own liturgical language. Parishes in North America will usually read the Epistle and the Gospel in English if asked, and in a small parish the answer to almost any reasonable request is yes.
Revised Julian for fixed feasts since 1968
The Bulgarian Church moved to the revised calendar in 1968, later than the Greeks and Romanians and after a long internal argument. The Nativity therefore falls on the twenty-fifth of December and the fixed feasts sit on the civil dates. Pascha follows the Orthodox reckoning. The practical result is that a Bulgarian parish keeps the same wedding calendar as a Greek or Antiochian one, and a Bulgarian marrying into a Serbian or Russian family will be negotiating the thirteen-day gap every December.
The calendar
When a wedding cannot be held
The four fasting seasons and the standalone fast days, applied on the revised calendar. The weekly rule is kept loosely in North America.
Every list of closed dates is applied by a parish priest, and a bishop can dispense. Treat this as the shape of the year, not as your parish’s answer.
- Great Lent and Holy Week
- Closed throughout, moving each year with Pascha.
- The Nativity Fast
- From the fifteenth of November to the twenty-fourth of December, so December is unavailable.
- The Dormition Fast
- The first to the fourteenth of August. The Dormition itself on the fifteenth is a major feast and a popular name day, which makes the weekend after it busy in a different way.
- The Apostles’ Fast
- Variable, ending on the twenty-ninth of June.
- The Elevation of the Cross and the Beheading of St John
- The fourteenth of September and the twenty-ninth of August. Both are strict fast days and both close a single otherwise open date.
Before the date
What has to be arranged first
Bulgarian parishes in North America belong to two different jurisdictions, and because many are small, the priest tends to handle the whole process personally.
- Baptismal certificates
- From the parish of baptism. Records from Bulgaria are generally obtainable through the relevant diocese, but allow time for the request to travel.
- A kum who is Orthodox
- As elsewhere, the sponsor must be an Orthodox Christian in good standing, since the role is liturgical rather than ceremonial.
- Permission for a mixed marriage
- From the bishop, where the other party is a baptised Christian of another confession, on the usual conditions about children. A marriage to an unbaptised person is not celebrated as a sacrament.
- An ecclesiastical divorce after a previous church marriage
- Required before a second crowning, and granted by the diocese rather than by a civil court.
- The civil licence
- Signed by the priest. In Bulgaria the civil and church ceremonies are separate events and some families will expect that shape; settle it early.
Around the service
Customs a guest will actually meet
None of these is part of the rite. They belong to the families, the diaspora and the reception, and they are what makes one Orthodox wedding feel unlike another.
Bread, honey and a broken dish at the threshold
When the couple arrive at the groom’s family home or at the reception, the mother-in-law meets them with bread and honey. Each takes a piece, dips it, and feeds it to the other. Then a dish of wheat, coins and sometimes flowers is placed at the door and the bride kicks or tips it over, and the more it scatters the better the year is supposed to be. Somebody will be sweeping for a while.
Pulling the bread
A round loaf is pulled apart between the couple, and whoever ends up holding the larger piece is said to have the upper hand in the house. It is done in front of everybody, it is the subject of a great deal of shouting, and the outcome is usually less accidental than it appears.
Gorchivo
Bitter. Shouted by the guests so that the couple will kiss and sweeten it, exactly as in the Russian gorko, and with the same absence of any way to bring it to an end.
The horo
The Bulgarian line dance, open at both ends, with everyone joining and the tempo climbing. In the villages it would go on outdoors for hours; in a hall in Chicago it goes on for rather less, but not much less.
Nazdrave
The toast, and the thing guests say all evening. Bulgarian etiquette expects eye contact for the toast, which a distracted foreign guest will get wrong once and then remember for ever.
The service itself
Read it moment by moment, with the prayers
Bulgarian Orthodox parishes celebrate the Betrothal and the Crowning in the order below. Every moment is set out in full on the main page, with the prayer said at that point printed underneath it.
The full service, with every prayerQuestions
Good to know
Does the Bulgarian Orthodox Church use the old or the new calendar?
The new one, since 1968. The Nativity falls on the twenty-fifth of December and the fixed feasts are on the civil dates, while Pascha is calculated on the Orthodox reckoning. That puts Bulgarian parishes in step with Greek, Antiochian and Romanian ones and thirteen days apart from Serbian, Russian and Georgian ones.
What does the kum do at a Bulgarian wedding?
The kum, usually with his wife as kuma, is the couple’s sponsor. In the church he holds a crown above the head of one of them for the length of the Crowning. Outside it he leads the toasts, carries a set of customary expenses and generally runs the evening, and the relationship ordinarily continues into the baptism of the couple’s children.
Why does the bride kick over a dish of wheat and coins?
It is a threshold custom, performed on arrival at the groom’s family home or the reception rather than in church. Wheat for a good harvest and coins for enough of everything, scattered as widely as possible because the scattering is the blessing. The Church has nothing to say about it and no priest is involved.
Are there many Bulgarian Orthodox parishes in North America?
Not many, and they are widely spread. There are two jurisdictions — the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese under the Patriarchate of Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian Diocese within the Orthodox Church in America — and a good number of Bulgarians attend an OCA, Greek or Antiochian parish because it is the nearest Orthodox church. Our directory lists what exists near you.
Can we be married in a Bulgarian parish if neither of us is Bulgarian?
Yes. The requirement is that one party is an Orthodox Christian in good standing and the other is a baptised Christian, with the bishop’s permission for a mixed marriage. Nationality is not a criterion anywhere in Orthodox canon law, and small diaspora parishes are usually glad of the wedding.
Is the Bulgarian wedding service different from the Russian one?
The rite is the same and both use the Slavic form with the questions of consent and metal crowns held by sponsors. The differences are the calendar, which is new in Bulgaria and old in Russia; the chant, which is a separate tradition; and the customs around the day, which are Balkan rather than East Slavic.
Keep exploring
Related guides
- The Romanian Orthodox wedding serviceThe Romanian Orthodox wedding: the nași, the civil ceremony first, the calendar, and the customs that belong to the party rather than the church.
- The Serbian Orthodox wedding serviceThe Serbian Orthodox wedding: the kum and kumstvo, the old calendar, the slava a bride takes on, and what a parish asks before it sets a date.
- Dating in the Bulgarian Orthodox traditionWhat the jurisdiction tells you and what it does not, before anybody is planning a wedding.
- The Orthodox wedding service, from beginning to endEvery moment of the rite in order, with the prayers printed in full.
Church: The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, represented in North America by the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese and by the Bulgarian Diocese of the Orthodox Church in America
Reviewed: · Editorial standards
Sources: Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia · Bulgarian Patriarchate
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