These scenes take place on the Saturday at Svitlana and Vasyl’s wedding.  Dance is an important part of the wedding, serving as a general backdrop during most of the 48 hours of the celebration, and also featuring very centrally in specific ceremonial moments. The dances are both traditional and new.

The wedding takes place at the bride’s family’s home, and simultaneously at the groom’s family home (they’ll get together occasionally on the Saturday, but the two wedding celebrations will merge only late on Sunday night). On Saturday morning, friends prepare food and decorate the yard. Bridesmaids sing as the bride is dressed in her traditional headdress made of grass, a koda; Her brother Yuri and the bridesmaids dance a rus’ka to begin the wedding celebrations. Later, still at the bride’s family’s home, they ceremonially pick barvinok (periwinkle) for the marriage wreaths. More guests arrive, people dance and eat and socialize. Barvinok is later picked in the same way at the groom’s parents’ house. Some 40 svashky dance at the groom’s house in the evening. A group from the bride’s party and another from the groom’s party  each go out into the village, meet, then walk on to the house of the wedding father, where they taste exotic foods and drink, exchange gifts, and dance. Back at the bride’s home and the grooms’ home respectively, the guests eat and dance until morning. See “Wedding part B” for the Sunday events.