THE CUSTOMS OF WEDDING AND MARRIAGE CEREMONIES IN VUSHTR /VIÇITIRIN EVLENME TÖRENLERİ VE DÜĞÜN ÂDETLERİ

Abstract

Unrecorded information does not have the assurance of survival. Writing is preserving and being preserved. The community that does not bother to write will suffer inconvenient future. Vushtrri is a town in the north of Republic of Kosovo. The residents of Vushtrri have suffered every kind of hardships, misfortunes and poverty. Nonetheless, we have to acknowledge their struggle to preserve their old national spiritual values such as: wedding customs, songs, folk songs, psalms, laments, lullabies, and stories, passing them from generation to generation, with its first verdure, and all under favor of writing this heritage. If we aim perpetuity, maintenance of our identity and the sustainability of the same, we have to record the bygone, hence pass it to posterity. The aim of our study is to publish the withering wedding customs of Vushtrri, thus prevent their loss. This study chronologically analyzed wedding and marriage customs in Vushtrri starting from, asking for the girl’s hand in marriage, betrothal, entering the nuptial chamber, up to seeing the bride. Being based on the older oral sources, the study ascertained that the old wedding and marriage customs are substantially forgotten. Consequently modern practices substituted the old wedding and marriage ceremony customs.

Keywords

• Marriage
• wedding ceremony
• Kosovo
• Vushtrri
• customs