The wedding I mentioned earlier in the week went off without any serious hitches.
While Amish generally don’t like being the center of attention, their wedding day is the one exception. Most Amish women won’t even tell people they are pregnant and some get mad if you mention it even when they are 8 1/2 months pregnant and it’s obvious. What that means is that the weddings get a little crazy around here.
As a rule, Amish don’t have church buildings or reception halls. They hold church and weddings and funerals in their home, most often in an outbuilding called a “company shed” or just “shed”, although some of them around here have full size basketball courts and cost upwards of a million bucks so “shed” seems a little inaccurate.
There is a “wedding church” normally held at a neighbor’s place, this is at the bride’s uncle fairly close by. You can see the chairs in the middle, the bride and groom sit in the middle pair facing each other with their “side sitters” on either side, guys on one side facing the ladies on the other. It lasts for a few hours with lots of extemporaneous preaching before the couple says “yes” rather than “I do”.
After the wedding church, they travelled by buggy to the bride’s home. They usually decorate the buggies and have “haulers” who will drive them over, the married couple in the buggy with most of the balloons and the other two “side sitter” couples in the two other buggies.
The little Amish kids will strip the balloons off the buggy as soon as it arrives so I went over to the wedding church to get a picture before they left.
This is the “corner”, the focal point for the wedding. The bride and groom sit here flanked by two other couples, “side sitters” who are also the official witnesses for the marriage. In this case one couple was the bride’s sister and her fiancé, they are getting married in just over a month at the same place, and the other was the groom’s sister and her boyfriend.
This is the view from their corner looking at the rest of the room.
During the day they are served food and drinks (non-alcoholic) by their “corner servers”, usually single relatives or close friends.
Everyone else sits on the benches and food is passed down the line. Each table has a handful of “table waiters” (non-married people in their youth group, relatives and neighbors) who hand each dish to the person sitting on the end, and then someone else is at the other end of the table to collect the dishes and return them. The wedding lunch almost always consists of some sort of meat (meatloaf yesterday, often chicken), mashed potatoes, home baked bread with homemade jelly, noodles and salad. Of course there are lots of deserts like pie….
While the guests are eating the married church women are making food and washing dishes outside in the tent…
You can’t see it but behind the tent is a “cook wagon”, a trailer with a bunch of ovens, and a freezer wagon, a large trailer that is refrigerated. They served upwards of 1,000 people yesterday from lunch to afternoon snack (“break”) to the evening dinner (they call it supper).
Throughout the day guests come to the corner and congratulate the married couple. It stretches well into the evening, when I was there around 9:30 last night the married couple had just slipped off to the house. They will live with her parents for a while, some couples live with the wife’s parents for years. The groom left his parent’s home by buggy yesterday around 5:15 AM and they finished up a little after 9:00 PM so that makes for a nearly 16 hour day.
Today they will clean up from the wedding, take everything down and then the bride’s sister will start to get ready for her wedding. I feel for her parents, this is going to be a very expensive year for them!
I am glad it is over, I have known the couple for around ten years so I am happy to see them finally get married, but it’s been a bit stressful helping them get ready in my own small way. We have lived here long enough to start seeing Amish we knew as kids getting married and having kids of their own.
Hopefully that was a little more cheerful than my usual posting, it isn’t all doom and gloom in the world and I intend to do what I can to make sure future generations can enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
Does the bride get to keep her teeth? Is that whole “married Amish women get teeth pulled and get dentures” thing real or a myth?
What?
I read somewhere, I forget where exactly that in some Amish groups women when they need dental work or when they get married they get ALL their teeth pulled at once and get dentures. Just type Amish women teeth into a search and you’ll see how common that wierd stereotype is. Do your neighbors do that or not?
All good, Art. Glad ya had a good time. The Amish take care of their families and we could probably learn a thing or two from them… but whadda I know…?
They do some things well, others not as much.
Although I would not wish to live as the Amish do, I find their way of life commendable. And I appreciate the fact that they do not have any desire to force their ways on the rest of us, unlike the new arrivals we are inundated with.
Thanks for these occasional peeks into their world from a non-Amish perspective, Art. Yes, it is a refreshing change of pace from the usual focus on grim politics and damaged humanity.
Thanks for posting this, I lived in Ohio for many years and got to know a bunch of Amish.
Pretty good people overall but realize that every Amish group is different and depending on their “covenant”, certain things are allowed and some not. For example the Old Order Amish are strict and many things are not allowed like you cannot use battery powered anything. Other groups are more modern and they use battery powered lights on their buggies.
The funny thing about the Amish is that THEY aren’t allowed to OWN modern conveniences but if they are visiting their Worldly English friends, they being neighborly can watch TV.
For example I always had Amish neighbors “stop by” and happen to watch my TV when there were Ohio State Football games on. 🙂
That’s funny. I had to give a ride in my car to an older Amish fellow this week and the first thing I thought of was, “should I turn the radio off?” I had Bill Evans playing so it wasn’t offensive by any means. I left it on, turned it down a bit, and he didn’t raise any objections.
These folks are considered Old Order as well, there is a very wide range of what is allowed from community to community based on the Ordnung. A few families have moved out to start new communities because they perceive too much is being permitted in our local community.
Many things to admire about the Amish. Thanks for sharing the info and photos.
My pleasure, glad you enjoyed them!
Going underground with the Amish for Plandemic Part Deux?
Leave the World Behind as bathhouse Barry would say after beefy cheesy gloryhole.
Really appreciate your inside peek at a culture that we barely comprehend, Arthur. As times get more sporty, the Amish are likely to thrive. We “English” are more likely to perish, but some will survive. You seem to be perched on that in between region, on the fair side.
Am curious how your relationship with the Amish will endure when your transportation service is impeded by fuel supply issues? Some of my old friends in the Ligonier area hold some extreme prejudice against Amish. Possibly even more harsh than their views about other third-world peoples.
Milton
Milton
Being honest, some Amish can be not great neighbors and they buy up all the property around here which drives prices up. There are plenty of people who dislike them and won’t deal with them at all.
I adopted my golden retriever from a rescue agency in Ohio Amish country. I was told by agency staff that they get most of their rescue dogs as a result of raids on Amish puppy mills in that area. Apparently the Amish, at least in that area, are notorious for puppy mills and for generally poor treatment of their animals. When I have mentioned this to other dog people in my part of Ohio, many of them share that opinion of the Amish. I have always thought of the Amish as commendable people.
That is probably true, its a big problem here as well. I know a few families that have large puppy operations, some take good care of them, some don’t. Amish don’t share modern sensibilities when it comes to animals, they mostly see them as part of the business but then again a lot of them do have little house dogs. Some have some very spoiled house dogs on one hand and then a barn full of dogs they breed on the other. It’s kind of weird.
Wonderful!