Sometimes traditions cheer us up, surprise us or even cause some kind of fear – and among those traditions wedding ones do these too. The characte4ristics of our country’s regions truly differ from each other. That’s why we can see differences between traditions.

In this region marriage between the members with the same surname was prohibited. The one who would break this rule would be sentenced with cutting his head off. Khevsuris got married in an older age, to the person with whom they were engaged from the birth. When they wanted to engage toddler, father of the son would send the uncle of the girl with silver coins and chain to hang these on the girl’s crib.

 Special meaning was given to the origin so called from good breed or not. In case of a woman marrying a man from bad breed relatives would expel her as the dishonorable one. The families who would give her a shelter would get a cat hung on their doors to shame them.

After the engagement the families of the man and the woman became relatives.Father of the son was obliged to send special gift to the father of the bride-to-be. Every new year sister or brother of the man should bring a “fate biscuit” to the bride-to-be.

During the wedding days father of the man would send two sheep to father of the woman. One should have been killed on the saint place and the other in the house of the bride-to-be.

Mother of the bride-to-be baked 2 biscuits. The girls from the village would go to the bride-to-be, dress her up in a wedding gown and followed her to the end of the village, where she should have eaten 1 biscuit and the other one was eaten after getting back with the parents.

The fiancé after three days should have returned at home without seeing fiancée. The young lady stayed in the house of her father whole year. During this year the groom had no right to appear even in the village of the bride.

After the year the man could send his closest relative to him to bring the bride-to-be. Then they would invite the chief of the valley who would say a prayer and with a thread and a needle sewed the clothes of the woman and the man together, as the symbol of their marriage. Mother of the man would prepare the wedding bed and say a prayer for the newlywed pair: “May the cross protect you, rejoice and your years to your old age be full of the love towards each other”. That was the beginning of their new lives.  

It was a shame to look at each other in presence of anybody else, also having a child before 3 years of marriage and Khevsuris strictly follows their rules.

As it seems, it was possible to get married in trial period. Information about this can be found in Vazha-Pshavela’s notes. Here we can read about it:

“The tradition of Khevsuri’s about marrying a woman is more surprising than Pshavelian\\s tradition called “Tsatsloba”. For instance, a Khevsuri man likes a woman and wants to marry her: he will tell her his wish and if the woman approves, they will go home together. There is no necessity in church ceremony. The woman stays in the fiancé\s family for a year. The man watches her, observes and they make love but not for having a child. If all in all he likes her he will ask her to marry him, but if not, he goes on searching for another woman.”