Wedding Traditions In Lithuania
By Lukne Petraityte, 5th Class

When my mom was about 10-12 she lived with her parents and 3 brothers. She lived on a farm with cows, pigs, horses, goats, and so on. They lived in a quiet neighbourhood with lovely surroundings in Lithuania.

My mom and her siblings always loved getting up to something together. They knew it was going to be a great day when rumours started spreading about a wedding taking place soon. Weddings back then were strictly on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday being the formal day where they signed the papers, got married and took pictures. Sunday was when they relaxed.

My mom and her siblings would be over the moon when hearing a wedding was taking place soon. There would be 5 main couples attending a wedding. 3 couples there to watch the wedding, two being young and one being a senior couple, the bride and groom-obviously- and a witness couple who are proof the couple are dating. The rest would be guests. That would equal about 5 cars attending the wedding.

My mom and her siblings would block off the road with a rope. One person would hold one end of the rope, on one side of the road , and another person would hold the other end on the opposite side of the road. The rope would be decorated with pretty flowers. When a car would come by the passenger would have to pay a handful of sweets for the rope to be lifted up so they can drive by, they would only do this when weddings go on since people attending the wedding would have bags full of sweets.

Sometimes my mom would have decorated baskets that the person paying the sweets would drop in there. Every once in a while they would fill a basket with sweets, since the place they lived in had a gorgeous river opposite their house and people would plan on taking pictures there and have a talk or drink.

Some people would even take an extra 10-20 minutes just to drive a different route not to pay the sweets. Other people would trick them and change the time they got there.

You may be thinking, why would you take an extra 20 minutes just so you don’t have to pay the handful of sweets? Well, it’s not only my mom and her siblings that would do this, other kids in the neighbourhood would catch on and do this too, and 1 handful of sweets could end up to 5 handfuls of sweets. I bet you wouldn’t like to pay 5 handfuls of sweets just to take pictures somewhere!

My mom and her siblings would block off the road with a long rope when a wedding would go on. They would do this so the person trying to drive by would have to pay a handful of sweets to drive by their neighbourhood. This was a great and fun way to waste their day since back then they didn’t have technology or as many toys as kids have these days!