"I was eighteen and got married out of real love." Evolution of wedding ceremony in communist Czechoslovakia
Abstract
Forty years of communist leadership changed a lot of aspects of everyday living in Czechoslovakia. These changes intervened also to all rites of passage, including wedding.
The new regime tried to suit traditional wedding and wedding habits to its conception. This new type of wedding should be simple, unified, civil and ideological.
For example, a couple could not lawfully wed in a church anymore. For some time, brides also stopped wearing white wedding gown and replaced it by an ordinary dress.
But there were many differences between state conception and reality. We want to show a real shape of getting married in communist Czechoslovakia, and therefore we used oral history and visual analysis of wedding photos.
At first, we describe three similarities of marriages in socialism: hard-time in hunting for wedding dress, bouquet etc., very young marrying age and frequent pregnancy of bride in time of wedding. At second, we present two examples of evolution of wedding in the period 1948–1989.
First example is development of wedding gown, influenced not only by fashion but also by political situation. Second example is a trend to close wedding in a family circle.
In our opinion, this trend is the most important heritage of socialistic impression to wedding. The first day of marriage quit being public event and moved to living rooms.