Orthodox weddings
The Romanian Orthodox wedding service
A Romanian wedding is cununia, and its distinctive feature is the nași: not one sponsor but a married couple, who stand behind the bride and groom as a working example of the thing being blessed.
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What is different here
The same rite, celebrated this way
The Romanian Orthodox Church, represented in North America by the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of the Americas and by the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America within the OCA.
The Romanian service is the Byzantine rite in Romanian, a Latin language written in Latin script, which makes it one of the easier Orthodox weddings for a Western guest to follow phonetically even without understanding a word. The order is unchanged. The questions of consent are asked in most Romanian parishes, following the Slavic pattern inherited through the region’s service books.
Two things about the shape of the day are worth knowing in advance. The first is that Romanians routinely separate the civil marriage from the church one, often by a day, sometimes by weeks, and the church wedding is understood to be the real one regardless of which came first. The second is that the procession at the end has a name everybody knows: Isaia dănțuiește, Isaiah dances, which is the opening of the first hymn. Romanian families use it as the name for the whole moment, and a nineteenth-century etching by Theodor Aman under that title is probably the best-known picture of an Orthodox wedding in Romanian culture.
Romanian chant is Byzantine in structure but has absorbed local melody, and in many parishes the congregation sings along rather than leaving it to a cantor. A Romanian wedding is usually noisier from the pews than a Greek one.
Nașii — the nun and the naș together
Said NAH-shee
Where Greeks have one koumbaros and Russians have two witnesses, Romanians have a married couple. The nași stand behind the bride and groom, hold the crowns, and are understood to be sponsoring the marriage by having one. They are usually an older couple whose own marriage the family respects, and the relationship continues afterwards: the nași are ordinarily the godparents of the couple’s children, they are consulted, and in a traditional family they are among the first people told about anything important. Where the sponsor role in other traditions is about standing witness, the Romanian version is explicitly about mentorship. There is an unmistakable logic to asking a couple who have done it to sponsor a couple who have not.
Cununii — metal crowns, sometimes wreaths
The Romanian word for the crowns gives the whole service its name: a church wedding is cununia, from cunună, a crown. Parishes generally use closed metal crowns held by the nași, though wreaths appear in some communities, and older village practice used crowns of leaves and flowers made that morning. Whatever the material, the crowns are the thing the language is built around, which is a useful reminder that the crowning is not a decorative stage of the service but the name of the event.
The language of the service
Romanian, with English growing steadily in North American parishes as the second and third generations arrive. Because Romanian is a Romance language, guests with French, Spanish or Italian will catch recognisable words — Dumnezeu for God, binecuvântare for blessing, cununie for the crowning — which makes following along unusually achievable. Many parishes in the United States and Canada now print a parallel text, and a bilingual reading of the Gospel is a common and easily granted request.
Revised Julian for fixed feasts, the Orthodox reckoning for Pascha
The Romanian Church adopted the revised calendar in 1924, so the Nativity falls on the twenty-fifth of December and every fixed feast lands where a civil calendar expects it. Pascha is on the Orthodox reckoning. This puts Romanian practice in step with Greek and Antiochian parishes and out of step with Serbian, Russian and Georgian ones, which is a live issue for the very common Romanian-Serbian and Romanian-Ukrainian couples in North America: two Christmases, thirteen days apart, every year, and a decision to make about which family’s table you are at.
The calendar
When a wedding cannot be held
The Romanian Church keeps the four fasting seasons and the standalone fast days, and Romanian families take the Nativity and Dormition fasts seriously enough that the closures are not negotiated.
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.
- Postul Mare, the Great Fast
- Great Lent and Holy Week, moving with Pascha. The longest closure of the year.
- Postul Crăciunului, the Nativity Fast
- The fifteenth of November through the twenty-fourth of December. December weddings do not happen in a Romanian parish.
- Postul Sfintei Marii, the Dormition Fast
- The first through the fifteenth of August, ending at the Dormition itself, which in Romania is one of the great pilgrimage feasts of the year and a date on which a great many families are somewhere other than home.
- Postul Sfinților Apostoli
- The Apostles’ Fast, variable in length, 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, each a strict fast day closing a single date in what is otherwise an open season.
Before the date
What has to be arranged first
Romanian parishes in North America belong to two different jurisdictions with separate chanceries, so the forms differ, but the substance does not.
- The civil marriage, often first
- Romanian practice commonly completes the civil registration before the church wedding, as is normal in Romania where the two are entirely separate events. In the United States the priest can usually sign the licence, but the family may still expect a separate civil ceremony, and it is worth settling which shape you are using before invitations are printed.
- Baptismal certificates
- From the parish of baptism. Records from Romania are usually obtainable through the local parish there or the diocesan office, but the request can take weeks to travel.
- The nași, who must be Orthodox
- And, in the ordinary expectation, married in church themselves. A parish will not always insist on the second point, but asking a cohabiting couple to be nași is a request the family is likely to find difficult.
- Permission for a mixed marriage
- From the bishop, where one party is a baptised non-Orthodox Christian, on the usual conditions. A marriage to someone unbaptised cannot be a sacrament.
- Premarital meetings with the priest
- Expected everywhere, with the number and content set by the parish.
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.
The bride’s veil goes to an unmarried guest
Late in the reception the bride’s veil is taken off and placed on the head of an unmarried woman, usually with the nași doing it and a specific song playing. It occupies the place a bouquet toss occupies elsewhere and it is considerably more tender, because somebody is chosen rather than a scramble happening.
Furatul miresei
The stealing of the bride. Friends spirit her out of the reception and the groom has to find her, pay a ransom, or perform something embarrassing in front of everyone to get her back. It is planned in advance by people who are not the groom and it is a fixture at Romanian weddings on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dar, the gift table
Money, given openly and often announced. In many Romanian weddings there is a formal moment in which gifts are recorded, and it is understood to be how a young couple are actually set up rather than a gesture. Guests unfamiliar with it should ask what is normal rather than guessing.
Hora
The circle dance, with everyone in it, going on for a long time. It is the backbone of the evening, the band knows exactly how to build it, and it does not conclude early.
Casă de piatră
The thing guests say to the couple: a house of stone. Not romantic, and entirely the point — a wish for something that will not fall down.
The service itself
Read it moment by moment, with the prayers
Romanian 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
Who are the nași at a Romanian wedding?
The nași are the wedding sponsors, and unlike most Orthodox traditions they are a married couple rather than an individual. They stand behind the bride and groom, hold the crowns, and take on a continuing role afterwards, usually including godparenthood of the couple’s children. They are chosen for the marriage they already have, which is the point of the custom.
What does cununie mean?
It is the Romanian word for a church wedding and it comes from cunună, a crown. As in Greek and Russian, the language names the whole service after the crowning rather than after any exchange of promises. The civil marriage is a separate word and a separate event.
What is Isaia dănțuiește?
It is the Romanian name for the threefold procession at the end of the service, taken from the opening words of the first hymn sung during it: rejoice, O Isaiah. Romanians use the phrase for the moment itself, and Theodor Aman’s nineteenth-century etching of that title is one of the best-known images of an Orthodox wedding in Romanian culture.
Does the Romanian Orthodox Church use the old calendar?
No. The Romanian Church adopted the revised calendar in 1924, so the Nativity is on the twenty-fifth of December and the fixed feasts fall on the civil dates. Pascha is still calculated on the Orthodox reckoning. This matters if you are marrying into a Serbian, Russian or Georgian family, who keep the old calendar and will be celebrating Christmas thirteen days later.
Do Romanians marry at the registry office before the church?
Very often. In Romania the civil and religious ceremonies are entirely separate and the civil one comes first, and Romanian families in North America frequently keep that pattern even where the priest could sign the licence. Decide which shape you are using early, because it changes the invitations and sometimes the number of days involved.
Are Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox weddings the same?
The rite is the same and the two churches are in communion. In practice a Romanian wedding asks the questions of consent and a Greek one does not, the sponsors are a married couple rather than one koumbaros, the language is Romanian, and the customs around the reception are entirely different. Both keep the same calendar for fixed feasts.
Keep exploring
Related guides
- The Greek Orthodox wedding serviceWhat happens at a Greek Orthodox wedding: stefana, the koumbaros, the closed dates, what the Archdiocese requires and which customs belong to the reception.
- The Bulgarian Orthodox wedding serviceThe Bulgarian Orthodox wedding: the kum, the new calendar, the bread and honey at the door, and what a parish asks before it books a date.
- Dating in the Romanian 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 Romanian Orthodox Church, represented in North America by the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of the Americas and by the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America within the OCA
Reviewed: · Editorial standards
Sources: Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of the Americas · Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America
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