Mongolian Marriage Customs & Wedding Ceremony
If you’re coming to Mongolia to attend a wedding, you’ll be surprised by the differences in tradition. Traditional Mongolian weddings have slowly adopted more contemporary features over the generations. However, certain main elements are still practiced in today’s Mongolian weddings
Engagement (Beseech a bride)
When couple wishes to marry each other, soon after, groom side will visit to make a proposal and father of the groom will present the hadag with some gifts while asking acceptance of the bride parents. If the hadag and mostly silver cup are accepted, it means the girl’s family agrees to match their daughter with the son. Then two side parents will discuss and choose wedding months, for exact date will be consulted with a monk or fortune teller, or a Mongolian calendar to ensure that the wedding falls on an auspicious date. Having the right wedding date is believed to aide in the success of the marriage.
Wedding photos
Most couples in towns or city will choose to have professional photos and have them taken maybe as much as 3 to 1 months before the wedding. Most couples will hire costumes, perhaps the most popular is for the bride to wear a formal western style wedding gown and the groom to wear a formal suit or a more modern stylish jacket and trousers. Alternatively, some couples choose traditional clothes (Deel). Unless you have a personal choice the photo ‘shoot’ will be at a local beautiful destinations and in the photographic studio so as to ensure romantic backdrops.
Wedding day
The biggest ritual would be the wedding ceremony where bride and groom become a married couple. On the morning of the wedding day, groom’s side will again arrive at the bride’s home and bring traditional Mongolian Deel for the new bride. Once a woman leave home this morning, it means she is leaving behind her grown family home and her husband home becomes her new home. As soon as the bride arrives, white felt is laid in front of the new ger. Bride boil milk tea and offers tea to their elders including the groom’s parents. Then silver or golden ring is exchanged in the countryside. In Ulaanbaatar, couples marry officially at the National Wedding Ceremony Palace and then proceed to the ceremony and party in the evening. The parents of the bride and groom host the wedding banquet together in a restaurant for 1 evening in big town or in young couple’s new home, often 3 days in the countryside. Family and guests invited to the wedding ceremony will normally provide cash gifts, furniture. There is do some rituals and feasting, dancing, music and the singing of traditional songs.
