The Wedding a Hutterite Colony Builds in Fourteen Days

The suit the man wears to marry her, she made. She measured him, cut it out, and sewed it on her own machine in the evenings after everything else was done. And that is the smallest thing about it. Two weekends. Several hundred people fed, twice. A machine shop emptied out and scrubbed and laid with tables down its whole length. Dresses, decorations, food, two days of singing. Not one item in any of it was bought. I am Eva Wurz. I am the head cook here, and I have done this eleven times. My husband Andreas has his own channel, where he tells the same colony from the men's side. In his video about funerals he says something I come back to at the end of this one: that in this community, death is the only door out of a marriage. I did not understand what that sentence weighed until I went looking for a number. SOURCES The Aufred Hulba a week or two before the wedding; the groom publicly asking her parents' consent; the well-wishing, admonishment and advice from elders; the singing in choir and small groups; the Saturday motorcade described as "organized confusion" with shouting, coloured balloons and honking horns; the Sunday morning sermon on Christian conduct in marriage; the midday meal with specially-made table settings and decorations; the Huchzeit at three or four in the afternoon with singing and poetry — Hutterites.org, Marriage. https://hutterites.org/our-beliefs/marriage/ The blue brocade wedding dress and the kerchief worn in place of a veil; the groom's black suit made by his fiancée; weddings avoided at Christmas, Easter and during planting and harvest; courtships of three or four years; the absence of a honeymoon; the lecture to the couple on the wife's submission and the husband's protection; and the figure of one divorce and four desertions recorded since 1875 — "Hutterite Families: Marriage," drawing on the standard demographic literature. https://family.jrank.org/pages/836/Hutterite-Families-Marriage.html That both partners must be baptised members of the church for the marriage to be valid, and that most weddings are held at the groom's colony — Hutterites, Marriage. https://clintstahl.wixsite.com/hutterites/marriage A NOTE ON HONESTY I have not given you a guest figure, because I do not have one that would be true for every colony and I am not going to invent one. The four to six hundred I refer to is the number my husband gave for a funeral on this place, which he counted. The emptying out of a machine shop and the laying of tables down its length is what happens here. Every colony solves the same problem with whatever building it has, and I do not claim ours is the usual way. And the number at the end — one divorce since 1875 — is a recorded figure, not a measurement of anybody's happiness. I say so in the video and I will say so here. Next: what happens on this colony when a child is born.