Estonian wedding traditions (Part 2)

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend. Today I'm sharing the second part of the Estonian wedding traditions (here's part 1 in case you missed it), covering all the traditions and customs happening at the reception. 

One of the most beautiful traditions happens right at the beginning of the reception, once everyone has been seated. It's the lighting of the candle of happiness. It's a tall candle symbolizing the fire of our marriage. It's usually lit by the parents, in our case our fathers, and we should light it every year on our anniversary. Our fathers also said a toast - one of the few moments during our wedding that had me in tears.

After that it's mostly fun and games. In a traditional Estonian wedding, there are jobs/positions (for lack of a better word for it) that need to be filled. There's the Wedding Seal, The Guard of the Bride, The Wedding Stud, The Dance Father, and The Kibe Yeller to name a few. The job of the kibe yeller, for instance, is to yell "kibe!" whick means bitter in Estonian and it's a sign that the bride and groom have to kiss. The lenght of the kiss is counted outloud, and they need to extend it every time. There's also a song that everyone can sing to help provoke the kiss. The point of the song is that everything tastes bitter until the bride and groom's kiss makes it sweet. So, there was a lot of smooching going on :).
Then there's the Guard of the Bride. That is a very important job, because in an Estonian wedding, guests may steal the bride and ask the groom for "ransom". Usually, the ransom is a task the groom has to do to get his bride back. At our wedding, there was one attempt to steal the bride, but the guard did his job and caught the thieves red handed.
The photo above shows the election of the Wedding Seal, who's job is to "seal" the deal with their lips. So, when another position is filled, the wedding seal kisses him/her on the cheek to seal the deal.

Then it's time for the first dance, which in Estonia is called the Opening Waltz. My father played the music for our first dance on a concertina (for lack of a better translation), an Estonian folk instrument.

And, more games. The games played during the reception are all up to the Pulmaisa (the man running the show, so to speak), so he may do many, or just a few. His job is to start the party and keep it going. Our Pulmaisa was great, and everybody was having so much fun. There was lots of weird dancing and singing involved.

About half an hour before midnight, the cake is served. Nothing really awe inpiring here, but I just wanted to point out, that some traditions seem to be international.

And, then, at midnight it's time to pass on the bridal wreath. The bride put on a flower crown, and the groom puts on a hat, everybody sings along the song of the Bridal Wreath and the flower crown and the hat are passed on to the next couple. They are the ones most likely to be the next to marry, so they become the new bride and groom. For the bride and groom, that marks the end of their wedding day. It's also customary for the bride and groom to change clothes after that.

After that it's more dancing and playing, but the "official" part is over. A decent wedding lasts until the wee hours of the morning, of course, and ours was a very decent wedding indeed.

I hope you've enjoyed taking a peek into an Estonian wedding. I loved sharing this part of our culture with you. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments, I'd love to ellaborate.

xo Hanna

Photography by Kerli Halliste

Estonian Wedding Traditions (Part 1)

I know some of you've been waiting for this, so today I'm going to introduce you to the wonderful traditions of an Estonian wedding. Because there are a lot of traditions to cover, I'll split it up into two separate posts. This on will cover all the rituals performed before the reception.

Nowadays, with the globalization of the world, all sorts of new traditions have become part of the weddings around here (a lot of american traditions, of course). I think these kinds of things are always evolving, so while I'm not against new traditions, there is something special about sticking to the old like our parents before us. So, from the start of our planning process we new we wanted a traditional wedding.

The first thing you need to know about an Estonian wedding is that the whole event is led by a person called Pulmaisa (which means Father of the wedding). Pulmaisa is usually a man, although some women do it as well. The job of the Pulmaisa is to keep the wedding going, basically like a host at an event. He also prepares and conducts all the rituals, and games.

The wedding starts with the ceremony, as per usual. Unlike in the States, it's not really custom for the bride's father to bring in the bride. Usually, the bride and the groom come together, but nowadays more and more people are loving the american way. We used half-and-half, meaning that my father brought me half way, and then me and Rein walked the end together symbolizing our joint wish to tie together our lives. After the ceremony, the guests can congratulate the newlyweds and usually that's also when you serve champagne and do all the group photos.

After this a number of rituals follow. The specific rituals being performed my vary slightly depending on the Pulmaisa, but most of them are done in every wedding. Our first ritual was getting rid of all the sins from the brides pre-married life. I had to prepare a rock where I'd written my name on that symbolized the weight of my sins, and Rein had to throw it in the pond. Side note: these rituals are always infused with humor, so don't take them too seriously. It is said that in the old days, the groom had to throw his bride into the water to see if she was sinful or not. When the bride sunk (which she probably did, since most people didn't know how to swim back then), she was sin-free, but when she didn't, she had something to hide. As times changed, the ritual also changed from throwing the bride to throwing a rock.

The next ritual was planting a tree. We buried the testament of our marriage under our hawthorn and the tree should grow old and strong, just like our marriage. The most popular tree to plant at weddings is of course the mighty oak, but we chose the hawthorn because of it's beautiful blossoms. I love this traditions, because a tree is such a beautiful symbol for a marriage, and in 20 years we can come and visit our tree and see how big it's grown and it will always remind us of our wedding day.

After the tree was planted, it was time for me to give up my maiden name. There are a number of ways to perform this ritual, from throwing a rock with the maiden name to a river to sending it to the sky with balloons. We chose to send off my maiden name with a flower wreath that I threw into the river flowing by my parents' house. Attached to the wreath was my manifesto of accepting my new name which I read out loud and which both my parents had to sign.

Now that I was officially Mrs Saar, it was time to make sure we would be blessed with many children. This ritual is always performed under a stork's nest (since they are the ones bringing the babies, you know). The groom has to climb as high as possible, and place a ribbon (with the names of the bride and groom written on it) around the pole that the nest is built on. Our Pulmaisa joked, that 20 cm of ribbon is said to equal one baby, so with a ribbon as long as ours we should expect about 11 (excuse me, what was that?).

Many of these rituals are often performed during the car procession that follows the ceremony. The procession called Pulmarong (wedding train) is actually just the whole wedding party moving from the ceremony location to the reception location, so there's a practical need for it, but sometimes it's also used to make stops to do the rituals (not every ceremony location has it's own stork's nest, for instance), and for visiting places that are special to the bride and groom (like where they first met). The fun thing about the procession is, that random people can put up road blocks for the bride and groom which they can only pass when they have performed the task which they are given. Usually it's something that they need to know how to do as a wife or husband, like chopping wood or changing a baby's diaper.

We had two roadblocks. At the first we had 2 separate tasks, but we could assist each other of course, like a married couple does. I had to put together an old meat grinder, and Rein had to chop wood (the ax given to the groom is always old, blunt, and rusted to make the job harder). We passed that test, and as a thank you to the kind people for their effort it is customary to give them a bottle of vodka.

At the second roadblock, we had to build a bird's nest box. My task was to select the right pieces that are needed to build it from a set of pallet pieces, and then we had to work together to build it. Luckily, they had a diagram to assist me in choosing the right pieces, so we passed this challenge with flying colors.

And, finally, we arrive at the reception location. That concludes the pre-reception part of the wedding. I hope you've enjoyed reading about our traditions and customs. I'll be back tomorrow with part 2 of this series.

Have a wonderful weekend!
xo Hanna

Photography by Kerli Halliste

My Style // Last days of the summer

Wearing // Lace skirt - DIY (tutorial) // Top - DIY by me // Jacket - Reserved // Sandals - Shu // Bag - Thrifted // Earrings - gift from a friend

Fall has undoubtedly arrived around these parts. It's been cold and rainy for almost 2 weeks now. This year we got 6 weeks of summer, and although it's nearly not enough, I am grateful for it. It is one of the most memorable summers of my life, that's for sure, and I'm going to miss it. These photos were taken on one those last warm summer days in Tallinn old town by my friend Kärt-Katrin.

I had originally planned to share this post yesterday, but then my computer decided she didn't want to be friends with the internet anymore, so I'm just going to post twice today.  I think I might need a new computer. Sigh.

Is it still summer where you live, or are you already polishing your fall boots?

xo Hanna

Our Wedding // Let's talk about wedding dresses, hair & make-up

Hi, guys! Today I'll be sharing my tips and tricks on wedding hair and make-up, and the story of my wedding dress.
First, let's talk make-up. I had initially planned to ask a friend to do my make-up on the big day. And, we even did a test, but eventually I felt that I wanted to do it myself. First, because I'm a control freak (just kidding....well, sort of). Secondly, because I knew that I wanted a very "me" look, so that my husband wouldn't be all "who's that?" on the wedding day, and I already new what I wanted and how to achieve it, so it made simply more sense to do it myself. Also, my wedding was very much DIY, so I liked the aspect of keeping in that spirit.

I watched some videos on Youtube, and did some testing at home until I was a 100% happy with the end result. Of course, I had a fear I would mess up everything on the actual day - it's like when you do a hairstyle just for fun to see how it looks like, and then it turns out awesome, and the next time you need to replicate it, it just doesn't come out. You know what I mean? Luckily, everything did turn out on the big day, even better than I had hoped.

So, my experience is, that doing your own wedding make-up is totally doable, but only under certain circumstances. I was already pretty good at doing my make-up for special occasions since I had a lot of concerts. If you love playing around with make-up, and you think you're doing a good job, then why not do it yourself. There are so many great make-up tutorials out there to help, also.

 

For a very brief moment I even considered doing my own hair. But, I knew that would be super stressful, and I really wanted to relax and not worry about it (since, you know, the Murphy's law I described before). I'm so glad I decided to take on a hair stylist. She is the greatest! She is a friend of friend. Me and Rein both have our hair cut by her, and I'm always so pleased with her work. So, if you live in Tallinn or in the area, you should definitely pay her a visit. Her name is Mari-Liis Must and she works at the young hairdressers' salon called Tuuletuka. 

Mari-Liis and I did 2 tests before the wedding day to see how my hair responds to different curling methods and products and how the whole thing holds up after several hours. I would definitely recommend doing a couple of tests, since you can try out more things and get the game plan ready.

I gathered some inspiration images before our first appointment to help share my vision. I was sure I wanted something not too clean, more of a messy curls look. And I also had the idea of having flowers in my hair from the start. My Mom also had flowers in her hair when she got married, so I wanted to carry on that detail and maybe make it a family tradition. I made the flower pins myself using this method I shared over at Oh Everything Handmade a few months back. I really loved the end result!

Now, to my dress. Isn't she gorgeous! I know I'm biased, since I designed it myself, but to see that vision come to life even better than I had imagined truly makes me so happy. I also played around with the idea of making it myself, but eventually I didn't dare to put myself under so much pressure.
The dress was made by my mother-in-law, who's an amazing seamstress. Fun fact,  she actually produced three dresses that attended our wedding - mine, her's and her mother's. Did I say she's amazing?

We began working on this dress somewhere around april, but the actual sewing part started in June. I sent her tons of pictures of how I wanted the neckline to be, and how I envisioned the back and the skirt and so on. And we had several talks so I could really communicate my design vision to her. Then we went to shop for the fabric. That was the hardest part. Initially, I had my heart set on using Venise lace, but turns out that is impossible to get locally, and I didn't have the guts to spend all that money to order it from somewhere not knowing if it was going to look and feel right. So, we made a quick change in plans. I'm actually very glad we did, because in hindsight, Venise lace would probably have been to thick and heavy for this dress.

The trickiest part of the dress was figuring out how to construct the lower part of the skirt. I wanted sort of this soft cascading tulle look, but neither of us had sewn anything like it before, so we had to figure out how to achieve the look I wanted. A lot of cutting and tulle later, it was perfect.

Our wedding colors were navy blue and pale salmon pink, so I also had a navy blue fabric belt, and pink crystal earrings (I made those, too). And my mother-in-law also made Rein the matching tie and handkerchief from the same belt fabric.

 

My wedding look was exactly how I imagined, and I'm so grateful to Mari-Liis and Kristine (my mother-in-law) for making it a reality.

Phew, you're such a trooper if you made it to the end of this very long post, but I felt I just had to share. So, thanks for letting me!
If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments.

Thanks so much for visiting, and I'll see you tomorrow!
xo Hanna

Photography by Kerli Halliste

DIY Easy Two-layered Gathered Lace Skirt

Did you know I used to hate wearing a skirt? Well, actually the reason I hated it, was because I detested wearing tights. Fortunately, I got older and used to tights, but I still prefer to wear skirts mostly during summer, with bare feet. And, seeing that I don't own that many shorter summer skirts (I only seem to be wearing this one I made last year) there was a cap in my wardrobe that needed filling. Then, in a couple of hours, I made this super simple gathered lace skirt with two layers. The cool feature about this skirt is, that the inner layer is a pencil skirt, and the outer is a gathered skirt. I love this combo!

Here's how to make your own:

You will need:
1) An old t-shirt or stretch fabric
2) Lace
3) 5-cm-wide elastic
4) 2-cm-wide elastic
5) Sewing Machine
6) Pins, safety pin, scissors, thread

Start by constructing the underskirt:

From t-shirt
1) Find an old t-shirt that is your desired color (that you want peeking through). The width of the t-shirt waist has to equal the width of your hips.
2) Cut off the shoulders and sleeves, then sew a curved line from the top until about the center (marked lines on the image above).
3) Cut the excess seam allowances.
4) Measure the length of the elastic you'll need by pulling it around your waist. When it's nice and tight, make a mark and cut. You'll be using the 2-cm-wide elastic here. Or, you can also use lingerie elastic, whatever works better for you, or what you have at hand.

From scratch
1) Cut 2 rectangles of stretch fabric. The width of the rectangle equals you hip measurement divided by 2. The length equals the desired length of your dress minus 5cm.
2) Place the two rectangles right sides together and mark a curved line to the side seam similar to the one marked on the image above.
3) Sew side seams.
4) Cut  the excess seam allowances.
5) Measure the length of the elastic you'll need by pulling it around your waist. When it's nice and tight, make a mark and cut. You'll be using the 2-cm-wide elastic here. Or, you can also use lingerie elastic, whatever works better for you, or what you have at hand.
6) Hem the skirt if necessary.

 The second step is to sew the lace skirt:
1) Cut a rectangle from the lace with these measurements: width = 2xhips, length = finished skirt length + 7cm (+5cm for hemming, if you want).
2) Make a canal for the elastic. sew down 7 cm from the top of the lace. Most lace fabrics don't fray, so just fold 7cm to the wrong side of the fabric, and sew with a 1cm seam allowance, creating a 6cm wide canal for the elastic to go through.
3) If need be, sew the hem.
4) Attach a safety pin to on end of the 5-cm-wide elastic (which should be the same length as you used for the underskirt) and guide it through the canal. Makes sure to secure the end of the elastic to the end of the canal so you don't accidentally just pull it through (it has happened). Also, secure the other end once you get there.
5) fold the lace, right side in, and sew the back seam shut, securing the elastic as well.
6) Fold the seam allowance open on the wrong side and sew the elastic down, just for better comfort.

 

Yes, I did make mine out of an old curtain, if you were wondering :). I always try to find new use for old materials, so I gave it a try. I really like it, so I'm happy I took the risk.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that it sparked a little creative fire in you!

xo Hanna

Announcing the 30-day #adayinamoment Challenge

I have a special announcement for you today! I'm so excited about this, I'm almost holding my breath! I'm starting a new 30-day phone-photography challenge called "A day in a moment", and you can all join in.

The idea for this challenge came to me when I was browsing on Instagram one day, and envying all the candid moments others seem to be so effortlessly capturing. For me, it’s so easy to fall into a routine and just let the days flow by. I hardly ever take pictures with my phone. I take a lot of photos with my DSLR for the blog, but I find myself missing a lot of moments because I don't have my camera with me.

The aim of the challenge is to capture more special everyday moments and improve my phone-photography skills. I think every day has moments that are worth remembering. Maybe it’s that kiss your husband gave you this morning, or the way your kid came and hugged you, or how pretty those flowers look on your window. These are things to remember. So, this is a challenge to find the extraordinary in an ordinary day. 

If you are also struggling with phone-photography, or feeling that you're not capturing the beautiful moments of everyday life, then join in on this challenge. To participate, just snap at least 1 photo every day of a memorable moment with your phone and share it on a social media outlet with the hashtag #adayinamoment. I'm sharing mine on IG, because I really want to use that outlet more than I am now, but you could also use Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+, whatever you like best. Of course, you can post more than one a day, but the idea is to snap a photo a day that captures your mood, an emotion, or a moment on that day that you'd like to remember.

I took the ABM self-portrait challenge last year (you can find those posts here), and it taught me so much about myself and really developed my photography skills, so I'm super excited to start this new (somewhat scary) challenge.

I hope you'll join me! At the end of 30 days I'll have a special prize for one of the participants.

So, who's in?
xo Hanna