Matchmaking gifts from the bride and groom

Matchmaking at its core is the process of an agreement between the bride, groom and their families to officially enter into marriage. There is no universal scenario for such a ritual. At different times and in different regions of the country, matchmaking traditions differ greatly. Considering that a wedding is one of the very important holidays in the lives of young people, the matchmaking scenario should also be an unforgettable, bright, original and fun event.

How does matchmaking usually go?

According to Russian customs, in Kuban the groom's relatives were initially chosen as matchmakers. Most often, the groom's mother, the future mother-in-law, was the matchmaker. The godparents and brothers of the groom were chosen as matchmakers. A matchmaker is a woman who selects young brides at the request of the groom. It was the matchmaker who had to go to the bride’s parents and talk about the wedding.

The nuances of matchmaking:

• Previously, matchmaking was used to clarify financial issues: what the bride's dowry is, where the newlyweds will live;
• often it's just a festive dinner. Matchmakers from the groom came to the bride's parents, who met them accordingly;
• odd numbers were chosen for matchmaking, except for the number 13, which promised an unhappy life for the spouses;
• It was believed that before the matchmakers entered the bride's house, they were not allowed to talk to anyone.

Basic attributes for matchmaking

For a long time, the custom of matchmaking was mandatory and many details had to be provided for in preparation. It should be noted that modern matchmaking has some differences from outdated traditions, but we can highlight points that are relevant to this day, namely:

1. Loaf. Since ancient times, the loaf has been a necessary symbol for various celebrations, especially weddings and pre-wedding traditional rituals.
2. Rushnik. The presence of a towel is mandatory not only at a wedding or name day, but also in the bride’s matchmaking ceremony.
3. Matchmaker or matchmaker. The services of a matchmaker in urban areas are now used less frequently than in villages, but planning a theatrical, traditional wedding in the city is indispensable without a matchmaker.
4. Gifts for the bride's parents. As a rule, during matchmaking, the groom should have gifts with him to the parents of his future wife - this will help appease future relatives and persuade the young couple to bless them for a long married life.
5. Flowers. During preparation, the groom and matchmakers should provide several bouquets of flowers not only for the bride and future mother-in-law, but also for all representatives of the fair sex of future relatives.

Modern rituals

If the bride's relatives can behave spontaneously and improvise, then the groom's matchmakers should prepare the necessary speech in advance . The essence of what is said at matchmaking by the groom comes down to the description of the beautiful bride. They say that there is a wealthy, intelligent and generous groom for her, who is deeply in love with her, and then they ask: “Do you agree to give the girl into good hands?”

Options for matchmaking scenarios

After the introductory speech of the matchmakers, you can ask the bride to solve several comic tasks to make sure that the girl will be a good wife. As an example, you could ask for answers to the following questions:

• What water temperature is needed to wash woolen items?
• What type of water will you use for your husband’s instant noodles: cold or hot? (The correct answer would be: “None. I will feed you delicious homemade food.”)
• List the products from which borscht is prepared.

For their part, the bride's relatives can also prepare questions and tasks for the groom . For example:

• Suggest choosing a city: Khabarovsk, Arkhangelsk, Yaroslavl. Depending on the choice, joke about the groom's earnings. (These cities are depicted on banknotes).
• Ask to hammer a nail with a crooked stem into the wall, commenting that in family life everything is not always sweet and smooth. It is necessary to be able to cope with everyday difficulties.
• Ask a few “manly” questions: “What tool do you need to make a hole in the wall?”, “How can you cut the wire: pliers or pliers?”

Recipes

There are several recipes for loaf, each of which is good in its own way. It is important to bake bread in a round shape, as it is a symbol of the sun and warmth. Many bakeries and private pastry chefs offer their services for preparing a loaf, but it is better to make a wedding cake yourself. There is an option for making baked goods from salted dough, but for a wedding it is preferable to make it from sweet dough, so that the life of the newlyweds is as sweet and beautiful as a traditional loaf.

In total, baking takes about four hours, three of which the dough needs to rise. If you correctly calculate the amount of ingredients and replace the dough well, the loaf will turn out airy and soft.

Traditional

This recipe is the most popular. The prepared dough turns out fluffy, and the loaf is soft and sweet. The long and not very easy preparation process is compensated by the amazing taste of the wedding cake.

Components:

• 1.2 kg wheat flour;
• 1/2 l milk;
• 5 eggs;
• 150 g granulated sugar;
• 2 tsp. powders;
• 1.5 tsp. vanilla sugar;
• 400 g butter;
• 3 packs of baking yeast;
• 4 tbsp. l. honey;
• 1 tbsp. l. salt.

The cooking process is as follows.

• Beat the eggs with a mixer and gradually add granulated sugar. When the mass becomes homogeneous, warm milk is poured into it, butter and salt are added. Everything is mixed well. Then add yeast to the mixture and beat again with a mixer.
• Next in line is flour, but before adding it, it should be sifted. This process enriches the flour with oxygen, resulting in more fluffy and better baked goods.

• Knead the dough thoroughly with your hands until it stops sticking to your fingers. You should get a homogeneous and smooth mass, which should be covered with cellophane and wrapped in a towel so that it does not become covered with a hard crust. Place the bundle in a warm place for two hours to allow the dough to rise. When the mass increases in size, you need to knead it again and cut off a fourth part for decoration.
• Make a circle from the remaining mixture and add raisin filling. There is a belief that if you put a coin in a loaf, the newlyweds will live in abundance. The money is placed just in the process of forming the loaf.
• Line a baking tray with baking paper and place the formed pie on it. Heat the oven to 200 degrees and place a small bowl of water inside. While the oven is heating up, the dough will rise a little more. In the meantime, prepare a mixture of egg yolk, a pinch of sugar and salt and brush the loaf with it using a silicone brush so that the surface of the pie turns golden during baking.
• Take care to decorate the dish. A piece of dough taken in advance must be rolled out into a thin layer and shapes cut out using molds. You can braid it and wrap it around the cake. To ensure that the decor sticks well, it should be moistened with water before attaching.
• Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake the loaf for half an hour. Next, you should turn the product so that it bakes evenly and leave for another twenty minutes. Cover a round tray with a cloth napkin and place the finished loaf on it, let it cool. Sprinkle the bread with powdered sugar or vanilla.
• If the dessert is baked in an electric oven, then after thirty minutes it is recommended to lower the heat level to 180 degrees.

Keep an eye on the container of water: as soon as the liquid has evaporated by more than half, add more.

From yeast dough

This recipe is much easier than the previous one and contains fewer ingredients. The main thing is to knead the dough well so that it becomes soft and pliable.

Ingredients:

• 50 g butter;
• 4 eggs;
• 6 tbsp. l. warm milk;
• 4 tbsp. l. granulated sugar;
• 1 pack of dry yeast;
• 1 tsp. salt;
• 4 tbsp. premium wheat flour.

Melt the butter over medium heat. Separate the yolks from the whites and beat with three tablespoons of granulated sugar. Add the remaining spoon of sweetener and a packet of yeast to the milk. Pour it into the sugar-yolk mixture.

Beat the whites thoroughly with salt and add to the rest of the ingredients, then add the pre-sifted flour and butter. Knead the resulting mass with your hands and continue the process until the dough stops sticking to your fingers.

Set aside one fifth of the mixture for decoration, form a circle from the remaining piece and place on a baking sheet with baking paper. Cover the loaf with a towel and place in a warm place to rise. Roll out a piece of dough into a thin layer and cut out decorations, sprinkle them with water and place them under a towel with the pie.

When the dough has risen, attach the finished figures and place everything together in an oven preheated to 200 degrees.

As soon as the crust appears golden brown, reduce the temperature to 180 degrees and cover the pie with foil, then bake for another hour. Remove the finished wedding bread from the oven and brush with sweet water, then allow to cool and welcome the newlyweds.

Traditions that have survived to this day

The ancient Slavs had many traditions and superstitions about how to get married. Some of them have survived to this day. Everyone decides for themselves how to conduct matchmaking , whether to use them or not. However, if there are elderly people in the family, it is better to adhere to the existing rules:

1. In wedding ceremonies, including matchmaking, special significance was given to the loaf. Its shape and color represent the sun. Matchmakers always brought the loaf to the matchmaking ceremony. The bride cut it at the table and distributed pieces to everyone present as a sign of agreement. Parents eat first. The entire loaf needs to be eaten.
2. Another traditional matchmaking item is the towel. Different peoples used it in different ways. It could have been a gift from the bride to future relatives. The towel was also tied on the chest of the matchmakers as a sign of consent. Today it is customary to simply present a loaf of bread on a towel. It is then put away in a safe place and used with the blessing of the parents. Such a symbolic item often becomes a family heirloom.
3. During matchmaking, the bride does not go out to meet the matchmakers. She is kept in a locked room until a certain moment.
4. The bride's parents never gave their consent right away, even if the groom was satisfied with everything.
5. During the viewing, the bride was asked to walk around and do some simple actions, for example, pour tea. This was necessary to identify the girl’s physical flaws.
6. Giving his consent to the marriage, the bride's father said parting words and placed his daughter's hand in the hand of the future son-in-law. Using such a sentimental moment today can strengthen the groom's sense of responsibility.

Cooking step by step:

So, let's prepare the ingredients for this excellent homemade bread: wheat flour, sugar, milk, butter, chicken eggs, salt and dry yeast (can be replaced with fresh - 30 grams).

First of all, let's take 150 milliliters of milk, a couple of tablespoons of granulated sugar, yeast and 4 tablespoons of wheat flour. Add yeast and sugar to warm (no more than 38 degrees) milk, mix and add sifted flour. You should get a mass with the consistency of sour cream - this is called dough. We will leave it warm for 40-45 minutes.

In the meantime, let's get to the rest of the ingredients: leave one tablespoon of milk for greasing the homemade loaf, and combine the rest with butter, salt and granulated sugar (3 tablespoons). Heat everything in a water bath or in the microwave until the butter melts.

The result was a milky-oil liquid mixture. Let’s cool it to a pleasant warm state, that is, up to 37 degrees.

During this time, the dough rose - it grew well and foamed. The yeast has woken up and started working - it’s time to start kneading the yeast dough.

Transfer the finished dough to a bowl of suitable size. Beat the eggs a little, leaving 1 yolk for greasing the workpiece. Add barely beaten eggs to the dough.

Then add some of the sifted wheat flour - about two glasses. Mix everything.

Now add the milk-butter mixture to the dough.

Mix and add the rest of the wheat flour.

After mixing, you will get this very sticky, watery and heterogeneous dough, which can hardly be called a dough. Let's move on to a very important stage - kneading the dough for the loaf.

Kneading this dough should be continued for at least 20 minutes. And I advise you to do it by hand! It's hard, right? But it’s worth it - we don’t bake LOAF every day! Gradually the dough will become more and more homogeneous, acquiring smoothness and elasticity. First it will begin to move away from the walls of the bowl, and then it will completely turn into a delicate, but at the same time elastic bun. Now cover the bowl with a towel made of natural fabric (this way the dough can breathe without getting windy). Let the dough rest for 1.5 hours. After 40 minutes (of the total time), gently knead the dough and return to a warm place.

This is how our bun grew - it became three times larger.

Now let's start shaping the homemade loaf. To do this, divide the dough into 2 parts - approximately 2 to 3.

We take the larger part and make a smooth round bun out of it. We transfer it to a baking sheet, which we cover with parchment and sprinkle with flour.

We make decorations from the second (smaller) kolobok. We divide it into 2 parts. We make a braid from one and lay it not very tightly to the base bun.

Next, we make a small braid and place it in the shape of a ring on the top of the loaf. This is a place for the salt shaker - we will insert a ball of food foil into it so that the depression does not grow during the baking process.

We make various decorations from the leftover dough - I have spikelets and flowers. We attach them to the loaf. But this is all optional and as your imagination allows.

We grease the future loaf with a mixture of yolk and milk (remember, we left them). Let the workpiece rest a little - about half an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200 degrees. We bake the loaf at this temperature for the first 20 minutes, then turn it to 170°C and bake it for another 40 minutes. If your oven is browning a lot, you can cover the loaf with food foil at the end.

This is the homemade loaf we got! Rosy and delicious.

Cool it on a wire rack and remove the ball from the foil. The loaf is ready.

I also want to show you my second loaf. I prepared it using the same yeast dough, in a mold, but decorated it differently. For decoration, I used a dough based on wheat flour (250 grams) and egg whites (125 grams). This dough holds its shape perfectly and does not deform during baking.

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Giving a loaf of bread to newlyweds for a wedding is an old Slavic tradition that is still alive today. In this article we will talk about how to make a wedding cake with your own hands at home step by step.

General recommendations

Matchmaking is a very interesting ritual , and it can be captured as a souvenir on a video camera or camera, the availability of which should be taken care of in advance.

To create a cozy atmosphere, it is advisable to bake something. Homemade baking promotes calm, relaxed conversation. And pre-prepared matchmaking toasts will make the conversation more relaxed.

The issue of matchmaking is a personal matter for everyone. And how to match a bride in our time is decided by the young people themselves and their parents. A carefully planned event will leave only positive emotions, it just takes a little effort.

Originally posted 2018-02-07 14:47:08.