The Glorious, Ever-Joyous Ukrainian Weddings of Old
1963 was a record year for attending lively and colourful Ukrainian weddings at the Rainbow Hall in Canora and the Burgis Beach Hall, Good Spirit Lake, just two miles from our family farm. That summer our family took in a wedding every single Saturday for more than two months – 9 in all! Each wedding, distinctive but culturally patterned, was an unforgettable extravaganza for the senses and a gourmand’s delight. Each was a great way to hang loose and build community bonds! We’re off to the wedding!
1.
Cows milked early, Dad’s shoes shined, everybody bathed and in their best clothes. We’ve arrived at the wedding reception—fifth one this summer. We don’t have to get close to the hall to feel the excitement. The mouth-watering smell of cabbage rolls, roast pork and pie, mingled with the high notes of the violin and the tinny taps of the tsimbali (dulcimer), come out to meet us. We feel we have left Canada for a place deep in our bones – Ukraine!
2.
Going up the steps of Canora’s Rainbow Hall is not for the shy! The entire wedding entourage is right in your face, standing in the foyer greeting guests! Everyone, including in-laws (svatii), are clapping and swaying to the music. Meet the musicians! One is sawing at the violin and resin is piling up like sawdust! Another is thumping on the ungainly bass. The third is tapping lightly on the tsimbali, whose straps are cutting into his shoulders below his smiling face. It’s non-stop traditional wedding pieces and polkas!
We greet the bride and groom and shake hands with everyone. There’s small talk with the in-laws and Dad throws a dollar into the open violin case. Now for something very important! The adults must take a shot as they enter the hall. Must…but really, who would refuse? A man is pouring whiskey for the men and another guy, wine for the ladies. There’s only one shot-glass and one wine glass, so it’s down-the-hatch and shake the last drops onto the ground, and hand it back to the server. Na zdorovia! To your health! No one is worried about disease. Today that seems amazing!
3.
Greetings to all friends and neighbours! Mom parks her present (a chip-and-dip bowl set) on the stage, where it will wait for “Presentation” late in the night. You can give cash, too. In the 1960s, a family might give $10. By today’s dollar, that would be a gift of about $90!
Chairs along the edges of the hall lend themselves to conversation and laughter. There is no shortage! The whiskey and wine men continue their rounds. Bought or homebrew? Not sure! A little Baba watches the wine man pour her half a glass. “Pownen’ko, pownen’ko!” she says. Full, full! Then she downs it with a smile and waves her hand. “Oh – it’s wine! I thought it was cider!”
Now the hall is so noisy the orchestra is almost drowned out. Little girls in fancy, flared lacy dresses are beginning to run around the hall in their white patent leather shoes, first shyly and then boldly with loud shrieks! The adults don’t notice.
4.
Great expectations of a Super-Supper! Many of the guests have worked hard all day in the fields and have brought gnawing appetites. The ladies are bustling around the kitchen. The cook is showing her mettle and remaining calm.
At last, the call comes to take your places at the long table running down the centre of the hall. Eating will be family style. No one begins till the wedding party is seated and the local priest prays a blessing. Supper will take a few sittings but not everyone is arriving at the same time, so it’s all fine!
What’s for supper? The table is not well-laden. It is groaning!!! Wedding preps called for butchering a pig and reposing twenty-five chickens. There are rice cabbage rolls, golden kulasha (polenta), mac with real farm cottage cheese, potato perogies with pork cracklings, nalysniki (rolled crepes with cheese smothered in cream), beetniks (bread dough in beet leaves also smothered), roast pork and chicken with natchinka (stuffing), and standard accompaniments like mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, corn and salad. Likely another dozen items that have slipped my mind! There are loads of pickles, beets and horseradish, and other condiments volunteered by the kitchen group. Orange Crush cider is served, watered down from a gallon of neon orange essence. No one serves that anywhere anymore!
“Throw potatoes!” one of the servers instructs a guest. OK. Where? She means serve yourself some potatoes, but she is translating directly from Ukrainian -- “kidai baraboli.” The potatoes are “thrown,” then passed, and there go the whiskey men and wine men, round and round! Getting dizzy just watching them! Like hawks, serving ladies watch the tables for empty bowls and replace presto!
Got room for dessert? Choose from the wild array of towering poppyseed chiffon cakes, cherry and apple pies, pampushki filled with poppyseeds, and nutty, caramelly, chocolaty squares brought by all those ladies in the kitchen. As a kid, a delight was to steal a cherry pie from the kitchen and take it outside to eat with your friends, breaking it up with your hands! The adults never noticed.
At last, everyone is full up, with still more energy for talk and laughter. Tinkling glasses to make the married couple kiss multiple times! And then there is a struggle to get complete silence in the hall for speeches and honourable mention of guests from far away. When they’re done, the hall is hot, and people are going outside the hall for fresh air or a smoke. Dancing will start in a few minutes. The last of the 200 guests have eaten and the tables have been removed. Now the floor is being dusted with greenish sawdust. The music-makers eat and flex their fingers. It’s going to be a long night!
5.
All is hushed now for The First Dance. Always a waltz. Little girls touch the fairyland bridal dress as it flies by, a whirl of lace and diamonds. The parents join in, and then the bridesmaids and best men. Now, it’s open floor and will remain so all night.
The orchestra balances waltzes and polkas for an hour, saving the wilder “Butterfly” and “Kolomayka” for much later. The night is soon becoming a hooting, howling good time! Perspiration is running freely! Around 9, local Ukrainian dancers take the floor. The little twin sisters in embroidered outfits bring the house down!
Cover Image: Detail of album cover, “Ukrainian Music Festival.” Ernie Zaozirny, Annie Chrunik, Peter Chrunik, Jim Gregash. Point Records. From Youtube post “Ukrainian Music Festival -Peter Chrunik -Ukrainian Wedding Polka” by POLKADON DB. Retrieved March 31, 2022 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E5mupslZU8.
Meanwhile, kids are running around, inside and out! The adults don’t notice. There’s a balcony and who isn’t chicken, will go to its very edge and look over. Older kids go outside sneaking cigarettes, the big thrill! The sound of the wedding is a dull roar that can be heard four blocks down.
Now the cook sits down in the kitchen and tastes her wares thoughtfully. Dobre vse. Everything is good. It passes her critical pallet. The ladies have made the whole kitchen spotless. More pies are laid out and cider pitchers replenished for a huge midnight lunch after Presentation.
6.
Presentation. The MC announces it over the thunderous din and roar! Ladies grab their presents. The orchestra tunes up to play music in the most melancholic keys ever! The wedding party is positioned behind the table and all the guests are lined up down the length of the hall.
First in line are the bride’s parents. Oh-h-h-h! Their expressions of farewell are tearful and long as they give her over to her husband and the new family circle. The orchestra is playing such a sad, sweet melody that most women are shedding a tear. Likely the bride will live all of five miles away, but it is the end of a big family chapter, an important rite de passage. Now the father of the bride is putting a $1,000 bill in the collection plate! He is talking directly to his new son-in-law. The bill is drawing “oohs and ahhs” from the crowd. Then aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbours and friends surge forward with presents and money, and the orchestra keeps churning out heart-rending notes. Those bridesmaids are sure getting a lot of kisses!
7.
Dancing and shots worked up appetites again! There’s a big near-midnight buffet down the middle of the hall with sliced turkey and ham, buns, cheese, veggies, pies and all remaining desserts. Dill pickles are going fast! By now all babies and toddlers are sleeping one beside the other on tables in a side room on a heap of coats. Older kids are showing signs of fatigue but are still running around the hall. Teenagers have captured the dancefloor, but the music remains traditional: polkas, waltzes and fox-trots. Now is the time for the kolomayka, a circle dance where individual dancers can strut their stuff to wild cheers!
More shots are waiting at the end of the buffet table. Here’s a person bobbing and weaving (actually, my father’s cousin)! He goes through the buffet line with just a fork, jabbing and eating. Laughter! “Take a plate!” someone shouts, but he doesn’t hear. He’s done!
8.
It’s sensory overload: the whirl and stomp, the dust of the dancefloor, the chatter. Suddenly, it’s the last dance, preceded by “Take your partner for The Sweetheart Waltz.” The lack of music is startling. The band’s shirts are soaking wet.
9.
But it isn’t over just yet. Everyone is invited to form a circle and hold hands to sing “De Zhoda v Rodeni” (trans. “Where There Is Unity in the Family”). The sounds of this traditional Ukrainian song ripple through the hall like gentle waves coming to shore:
Where there’s harmony in the family
Where peace and quietness dwell
How fortunate are those people
And life goes very well.
On them is bestowed blessing
God sends to them good things.
And lives with them always.
And lives with them always.
10.
OK, find the kids and pick up the sleeping babies. Here’s hoping the cops aren’t out tonight, as a lot of people will fail the sobriety test of the day: walking a straight line! Bet a lot of guys will drink pickle juice tomorrow to clear their heads! There will be another party tomorrow for opening of gifts and hall cleaning. The bride and groom will be there, honeymoon plans to follow.
Afterword
The last big wedding reception in this style that I attended was my brother’s in the early 1980s, held for a couple hundred people. The Rainbow Hall in Canora seemed to have shrunk in size and the balcony wasn’t as high as I remembered.
For the wedding, Dad butchered a steer, and my sister and I came home to help prepare 30 chickens. A local super cook was hired, and droves of kitchen help drummed up. The meal was fantastic! At the end, the groom took the cook – apron and all—for a swing around the dance floor!
Reality check about these weddings! Not all of them were melody and harmony! “Fistfight outside!” was a common call. When two brothers returned from a wedding with torn shirts to their father’s stern appearance, they thought fast. They couldn’t admit to fighting so they explained, “They were pulling us to the supper table, and we didn’t want to go!”
Some men (like our Dad) were super-exuberant revellers! We finally got him out the door at one hall.
Then he declared he had left his coat behind. After waiting for him in the car for almost an hour, we went to look for him. He was on the dance floor!
The police were known to raid some weddings looking for homebrew. Legend has it that one community outsmarted them by rigging the flow to the tap in the kitchen! But that’s another chapter in the history of the glorious, ever-joyous nuptial receptions of a wonderfully free, loving, celebratory people.
Katya Szalasznyj.
KATYA SZALASZNYJ grew up on the east side of Good Spirit Lake and resides in Saskatoon, with her husband Vasil. She was an archivist with Saskatchewan Archives and taught English to newcomers in the LINC program, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, for many years.
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