Orthodox CHRISTIAN Services, Generally

For many Americans (and Australians), the ancient Orthodox wedding is unfamiliar. It is structured differently than Catholic and Protestant nuptials. It is dynamic, filled with symbolism, and aesthetically rich. It is unmistakably Trinitarian. As with all Orthodox services, verbal content is sung a cappella or chanted. Our sound is more Eastern than Western. Wording can be poetic, even flowery, and is woven through with Biblical references. Our services are holistic, appealing to the physical senses while demanding mental attention, inspiring emotional stirrings, and prompting spiritual engagement with Christ. Outwardly, it is a "smells & bells” experience, using creation to give glory to the Creator in beauty and thanksgiving. We use incense––a lot. We light beeswax candles and oil lamps. We ring bells: in bell towers, on censors, on vestments. We make the sign of the cross––like it soon will be subject to a tax. Our clergy wear regal vestments. We adorn churches top to bottom in colorful iconography painted according to ancient practice. We kiss things: icons, crosses, chalices, the priest’s hand, each other. Ours is not an austere experience.

So, What's Different with the Wedding, specifically?

Today, the Church celebrates in a continuous ceremony two historically distinct services: the Betrothal (or the "Exchange of Rings") and the Wedding Proper (or the "Crowning"). These comprise several actions (pictured and described briefly below) which create and reveal movement, both physical (from back, to center, to front of the church) and symbolic and spiritual (from the world toward Heaven). We have no wedding vows, since marriage is not viewed contractually––the service presupposes the pair's knowing commitment to enter a lifelong, sacred union, inviting Christ into every aspect of their life. There is no "til death ye do part," as it is the Church's experience that, through mutual self-sacrificial love, marriage is brought into the Kingdom of God and death is therefore powerless over it. More pragmatically: wear comfortable shoes! The wedding will be 45 or 50 minutes. But, you will not be bored. 

The ceremony begins with the Betrothal service, whose central point is the Exchange of Rings. This occurs in the entry of the church, the area closest to the outside world. The people pray for the couple, blessing the union which has already begun in the world before they came to be more fully united by God in the church. And, while their journey has already started, the service looks to its ultimate fulfillment in the Kingdom to come. The priest, making reference to biblical examples of the symbolism of rings, blesses the rings and, with the rings, blesses the couple, betrothing them to one another three times: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Before being placed finally on the couple's hands, the rings are exchanged three times between bride and groom. The couple wear their rings on the right hand, not the left: the right being the hand by which oaths are sworn, honor pledged, and the sign of the cross made to outwardly express one's inner faith. Exchanging rings signifies promise, stewardship, and the solidarity, complementarity, and eternal nature of marriage.

After exchanging rings, the priest leads the couple in procession into the middle of the church, chanting Psalm 128, one of the Psalms of Ascent sung by Jewish pilgrims on the way to the Jerusalem Temple millennia ago. In this, the couple physically and symbolically bring themselves, each other, and all their lives into the midst of the assembly, while moving toward the altar at the front of the church, as an offering to God. For Orthodox Christians, the concept of symbol is not merely a nod to something "out there." The word's etymology indicates more than simply some thing that represents some other thing; it presumes substance. The procession, as any other symbol, is symbolic precisely because it is substantive, and has substance precisely because of its transcendence. The act of procession both reflects and facilitates something else. By this procession, the couple, in the midst of the assembly, bear witness to, and inaugurate, the new reality of God's Kingdom in their lives occasioned by the mystery of marriage.

Now in the center of the church, the bride and groom receive lit candles from the priest. The candle flame recalls several things: Christ, Who is light; the wisdom of the Scriptures; and the warmth of the Holy Spirit, Who kindles love in the hearts of those seeking Truth. The couple keep their candles lit until the end to remind them that successful fidelity and love come from reliance on Christ, and that they will more peaceably walk their appointed path if guided by the wisdom of the Scriptures as taught within the community of God's people (cf. Psalm 119:105; Acts 8:30-31; 2 Pet. 1:20-21). Before the betrothal service ends and the wedding itself begins,* the bride and groom, now fully surrounded by the assembly, each declare that s/he has come freely, without promise to another, to be joined as husband and wife. (*Helpful hint: guests will know the wedding proper has begun when the priest chants aloud the proclamation that begins all sacramental services, "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ....")

The Crowning is the central moment of the wedding proper. After a series of general petitions and specific prayers for the couple, the priest places crowns* (often connected by a white ribbon) on the bride and groom three times: in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The crowns represent Christ's kingship, in which all are called to participate. Crowns also symbolize Christian martyrdom. The word "martyr" (commonly used for those who die for the Faith) simply means "witness." A couple that is victorious in overcoming the struggles common to marriage bears witness to the transformative power of self-sacrificial love and fidelity to Christ, since such a love is impossible without God's grace. To the extent a couple are victorious against self-will and ego, their marriage is a testament to the call to imitate Christ. (*In Russian and other Slavic practices, the crowns often look to have come from central casting for an epic Hollywood film. In Greek and other mediterranean practices, they are simpler––and easier to wear!––being made from olive branches, orange or other blossoms, or myrtle or other leaves. Look for Australian flora in this one!) 

The epistle reading (Eph. 5:20-33) is from St. Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus, penned in about 62 A.D. In today's cultural milieu, one might focus on but a single aspect of this reading and see an undue burden placed on one or the other of the couple. But, the reading admonishes both parties to love with total self-sacrifice, each caring for the other under all circumstances without condition. It challenges the reader to see love as verb, rather than noun. The Church recognizes love as an act of the will, requiring daily re-committment, prayer, struggle, thereby leading the couple into ever deeper communion with one another and with God. A short Gospel reading (John 2:1-11) follows. It gives the account of a wedding feast where Christ turns water into wine. By His presence at the wedding and the symbolism of this miracle, Christ blesses marriage and directs our attention to the mystical, transformative purpose for which God has set it aside.

Following a series of hymns, petitions, and the Lord's Prayer, bride and groom share blessed, sweet wine from a common cup. This recalls an earlier practice when couples were joined in marriage by receiving the Holy Eucharist together. Today, they each drink three times from the common cup. The ritual of shared wine gives expression to the celebratory and unifying nature of marital love; while wine, for Christians, also evokes martyrdom, which in married life is the calling to die to self-will and give one's life totally to the other.

After the common cup, in preparation for the so-called "Dance of Isaiah" the priest binds the hands of the bride and groom with a white scarf. This act and its accompanying prayers that God unite the couple express the Church's understanding that marriage is not contractual, is more than a sum-is-greater-than-its-parts calculus, but instead is something that creates an ontological change in the pair, a blessed union that the Church recognizes as eternal, even transcending death.

Crowned and bound, the couple are led in ceremonial procession around the center table in front of which the actions have thus far been focused. This recalls earlier times when, after the ceremony, the couple would be led to their new home. It is also reminiscent of Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet who, on receiving God's revelation that He would send his long-promised Messiah to be born of a Virgin, could not contain his joy and broke out in dance. From this, the procession gets the name, "Dance of Isaiah," as the people and the couple show their own joy in God's faithfulness. The priest, Gospel or Cross in hand, grasps with the other the couple's bound hands and leads them in three turns around the table. The choir correspondingly sings three hymns, one in honor of Isaiah's revelation, one for Christian martyrs, and one for the Twelve Apostles whose teaching was God as Trinity. The hymns recall the recurrent themes of martyrdom, union with the incarnate Christ, and God as unselfish love. (Of interest: the Church has used these hymns since ancient times to pronounce God's blessings, in particular at ordinations to the priestly ministries, indicating the Church's  understanding that marriage itself is a ministry.)

Finally, the priest, removing the crowns from the couple's heads, recalls the Old Testament saints, Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebecca, and Jacob & Rachel. He admonishes the couple to go in peace, rejoice, and keep God's word. The ceremony began in the vestibule, proceeded to the center of the church, and now ends in the front at the foot of the altar, representative of God's eternal Kingdom. While the wedding's physical and liturgical movement have ended, the couple now begin their marital journey through this life and into the next, along the way doubling each other's joys and halving each other's sorrows. 

The icon of the wedding at Cana depicts the Gospel reading for the wedding service (John 2:1-11). In this passage, which records the first of Christ's signs––turning water into wine at His mother's behest for the benefit of the guests––the Church has always seen, by Jesus' presence there, His intent to bless, and manifest as special, the marital union. Indeed, while water is necessary to physical survival, wine is associated both with temporal gladness (cf. Psalm 104:15) and eternal life (cf. John 6:53-58; Matthew 26:27-28; 1 Cor. 10:16, 11:25). Just as He transformed water into something more, by Christ's miracle at the wedding, He points to the mystical (or, "sacramental") possibility of transformation by grace that the marital union offers. In marriage, man and woman become "one flesh" (as lock and key become a single mechanism, or violin and bow a single instrument) (cf. Mark 10:6-9). Marriage is thus understood not as a human institution for exercising mundane purposes that society or the couple gives it. It is seen as an icon of the Church Herself (cf. Eph. 5:31-32) and, therefore, a community within which grace is offered in a special way, both symbol and revelation that movement toward and even experience of God's Kingdom––by faithful, sacrificial love––can begin, here and now.