The Wedding - Part III: Chicken Dance? No thanks

Every international wedding must have its interesting and funny parts. In our case, the challenge was how to combine Romanian traditions and a German way of partying.

Romanian weddings mean a lot of traditions, too much food, endless dances and doing all these over one night – regardless how early the party starts.


There are some really funny traditions - for example, the bride and groom each leaving their homes (where they supposedly lived in mom and dad´s house till the marriage) to go to the wedding ceremony. There´s something celebrating and sad in the same time about it, and the Romanians like to mark the moment with music and dance. This old tradition started in villages and it is quite funny now to see it replicated in the large cities – where basically the wedding party starts in front of the block with a circle dance on the street and live music with folk (mostly accordion) musicians. Not everybody does it anymore– and I wouldn´t have had it this way. But I´ve seen some in Bucharest, and my cat Ciquita Bonita was also a big fan of them, always curiously watching from our balcony on the 7th floor.

Well, this is no tradition for Germany. I just can´t imagine well dressed wedding guests dancing and singing on the street – somebody would call the police.

While the bride gets her hair done by the godmother, and the musicians and family sing sad good-bye songs (followed by the street dance in the end), the groom also has his share of ritual departing: he will be shaved by the godfather in the morning. This would have been pretty funny for my own fiancé – he wouldn´t let anybody shave him anyway, especially as he imagined the whole thing being done with an old traditional shaving knife.


Stealing the bride is a must in most Romanian weddings. Some brides are against it, but mostly the deed gets done by a group of loud friends who make the bride disappear around midnight and take her to some disco. This is no longer a surprise for anybody. Usually one of the thieves comes back with one of the bride´s shoes, to prove they´ve got her, and asks for a reward to bring her back. The reward needs to be paid by the godfather or by the groom, depending when exactly the bride was stolen, and consists of funny little arrangements like some bottles of wine or the groom´s singing or declaring something romantic to his bride.


You can guess this bride here did not get stolen, as the German groom declared this would turn the well-established schedule upside down and would bore the guests who would wait for the bride to come back and the wedding to “restart”. So I made it clear to my Romanian guests that stealing the bride is against the law in Germany.


A Romanian wedding tradition that always intrigued me was the Chicken Dance. This is quite an old, meanwhile no longer fashionable tradition, which I remember from earlier weddings. It´s actually the godfather who dances between the tables, holding up in his arms a dead but very cheerfully decorated chicken and collecting small money gifts from the guests. If the godfather was tipsy enough and had entertaining talent, this was a pretty funny moment – although it always left me wondering what would be its deep meaning. Of course, Chicken Dance would be a no-go for our modern and cosmopolitan wedding – not that I would have known how to sell this program piece to my German groom.


There is some meaning in another Romanian tradition, which requires that the bride is redecorated with a traditional scarf placed on her head instead of the bride´s veil. This is a sign that now she´s turning into a serious housewife (and needs to look like one too). The veil is then placed on the bride´s maid head, and this poor young lady should be the next one in line to become a serious housewife. Got my share of that one too. The only thing that I managed to keep consequently away from was catching the bride´s bouquet – but this only to avoid the traditional and cheerful “when-do-you-get-married” interrogations.


Indeed, we did not have many of those traditions at our wedding party. But we did have the Romanian folk dances, which are performed in circle and last up to thirty minutes each (“hora”). First “hora” dances were happily involving the Romanian guests, while our international guests just watched, relieved they don´t have to do it. They did, eventually, as my friend Erika raised everybody from their tables and she would not take no for an answer. The next “hora” saw most non-Romanian guests quickly disappearing God knows where, but we were happy to see some courageous ones still standing and even enjoying them.


The German wedding traditions were nice surprises from our family and friends. We had some funny power point presentations in the style of “1001 nights”, with childhood photos and how we got together. There was a map of Europe where each guest could pin a needle on the place they came from. Polaroid photos were made into a spontaneous guest book. And a bunch of games were prepared, among which bride and groom answering some delicate questions or the bride having to touch a bunch of male guests legs and recognize her groom among them.

I was telling you Romanian weddings have to go on and on till morning the next day. And at the end, you can´t wear your shoes anymore as you probably broke them or lost them during the dance. Well, around two o´clock, when I had the feeling the party is just beginning, our first guests were leaving, to my regret. On the other side, my feet were hurting in a satisfying way, so I guess we did dance enough in the end.