Wedding Culture in Turkey (+ Wedding Wishes in Turkish)

Lesson Transcript

Want to speak real Turkish from your first lesson?

Herkese merhaba, ben Seda!

Hi everybody, my name is Seda.

Welcome to TurkishClass101.com.

Nasılsınız? Şimdi sizinle düğünlerle ilgili konuşacağım!

I will be talking about weddings! Wedding traditions in Turkey!

Turkey as a country has a variety of traditions.

So think about it like this Turkish people came from the far northern Asia to Anatolia

hundreds of years ago and they lived in these lands for a long time but there were different

cultures and people living here Romans, Jews, Armenians, Kurdish people, Greek people, etc.

So for hundreds of years all these cultures mixed up. Why did I tell you this? Because whatever

I say will not cover everything about wedding traditions in Turkish weddings are always

have been an important part of Turkish social life and if you travel to different parts of

the country especially in rural areas you will find traditions dating back hundreds of years.

So today I will just give you a general idea. Let's start. First of all traditionally we have

three stages of marriage. Söz, nişan, nikah and düğün they are together.

Söz literally means promise or a saying but in this sense it means commitment. When couples

get serious in their relationship they do söz. What is söz? The groom's family come to the bride's

family house and they ask the woman officially by saying “Allah’ın emri, peygamberin kavli ile kızınız Selen’i oğlumuz Özgür’e istiyoruz. By the command of Allah and with the

word of the prophet we want your daughter's hand to our son Özgür something like that.

This is the tradition but hundreds of years ago this was literal. What I mean is the bride

didn't know the groom and vice versa and didn't have a say in the marriage and parents would ask

permission and engage the kids you know in their own judgment. Anyway but nowadays couples agree

on getting married and instead of bending the knee and giving away Turkish families do this.

And I'm sure there are a lot of people out there doing what has been done in American movies.

Things are changing fast so this doesn't cover everyone. Anyway if everything is okay the couple

wears a wedding band on the right hand this means they are engaged. Sözlenmek. After this there is

the nişan. This is the engagement and this can be after a month or a year it's couple's decision.

And nişan is like a small wedding party some do it at home some do it like a regular wedding

and there is a special engagement dress for this like a wedding dress and people come to the party

bring gold and money and give these to the couple. And here the wedding bands are still on the right

hand and there's a saying about this nişan kız tarafı nişanı kız tarafı düğünü erkek tarafı

yapar. The girl's side pays for the engagement and the boy's side pays for the wedding. So after this

party the time of the wedding again depends on the couple's preferences decisions but a couple of

days before the wedding the bride has a gelin hamamı and kına gecesi. Gelin hamamı is bridal

hamam. Bride and her family and friends go to hamam something like a spa but more traditional

than that just search for it. They eat get massages get wash trolley play music dance and have fun

and after that bride has a kına gecesi henna night. All the women gather burn henna and put

the henna on the palms of the bride and everybody else they close it like that and let it sing and

they sing dance cry party together. This is not like a bachelorette party more traditional with

family and friends however a lot of people are doing more and more classical bachelorette parties

nowadays. The henna nights are still there in you can write kına gecesi and see what it looks like

and some people buy special red indian like dresses for the night and normally the groom

doesn't have a special party but he goes up with his buddies and he gets a special haircut

which is called damat traşı. So we finally arrived on the wedding day the bride and the groom get

ready in their homes and then the groom and his family come and take the bride from her home

generally with davul zurna drums and clarions and they make düğün alayı the wedding procession

a lot of cars make noises follow the bridal car to the wedding place we have two different part

of the wedding as i said before nikah düğün nikah is the legal process düğün is the party

this can be in two different places or they can be both in one place only a government

official can initiate a formal legal wedding in turkey so couples either go to the government

buildings which have big rooms to accommodate the guests after that they go to the party place to

have fun or invite the government official to the party place to the wedding place but by invite

i mean legally ask to the official to come to the wedding some people prefer two different places

because the first one the room is for free you can invite everyone you know we don't have to

pay for anything and they have a chance to congratulate you and after that for your party

you can just invite the closest people or whoever you want to be there some people have an unofficial

religious nikah as well and generally the day before the legal wedding it is called dini nikah

this is not legally binding in turkey some people do it some people not so depends on the

people anyway guests don't bring house gifts to the wedding they bring gold coins and money and

if they visit the house after the wedding they then bring the house warming gift and now the

wedding bands are carried from this hand to this hand to the left hand okay that's it with the

traditions guys of course there are more details but it will take forever to cover everything

before i go i will give you some congratulation messages you can say allah bir yastıkta kocatsın

god make sure that you get all in one pillow supposedly in olden days instead of two small

pillows couples had one big long pillow and wishing them this means that they stay together

till their old age and another thing is her şey gönlünüzce olsun hope you get everything you your

heart's desire something like that you can just simply say mutluluklar literally it means happiness

bless you would be the normal translation you can also say hayırlı olsun let it be blessed

and you can say mutluluğunuz daim olsun let your happiness last forever you can say ömür boyu mutluluklar happiness for a lifetime

or i wish all of you have something like that i wish you have a happy life

okay um that's it i think these sentences are enough and yeah they are enough i hope you have

a rough idea about how turks get married and i hope you enjoyed your lesson please leave some

comments about your traditions in your country uh the wedding traditions in your country and me

and i will see you next time your language learning take your very first lesson with us

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