What happens at an Amish wedding? Amish researcher Karen Johnson-Weiner discusses Amish wedding customs in a recent article for Lancaster Online.

wedding-corner-table-amish

Photo by Karen Johnson-Weiner

The piece focuses on the Lancaster community, though it also mentions more conservative settlements.

Karen shares that typical wedding customs have been changing – and not just in the more progressive communities.

If you’ve ever wondered how the food works, how many guests attend, or what else happens at an Amish wedding, you’ll like the article.

Topics covered include:

  • How food arrangements are handled (not everything is homemade nowadays)
  • When a couple is typically “published” (the upcoming wedding announced in church) and how it varies across settlements
  • How the traditional fall wedding dates have become more flexible as vocations have changed
  • Why weddings have grown in size…and why “wedding trailers” may come in handy
  • Points of emphasis in the ceremony (with preaching from the Old Testament and Book of Tobit)
  • Entertainment and matchmaking after the ceremony, and examples of food-related practical jokes: “a mousetrap in the eck salad, gummy worms sprinkled over food or a bowl of prunes sewn together.”

The article also includes a chart plotting the number of weddings in Lancaster County up until 2010 (180 that year, continuing a steadily upward trend).

Based on those numbers, you can estimate that close to 2,000 weddings happen each year across Amish society.

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