The month of October marks the beginning of the wedding season for Lancaster County’s Amish community. Their wedding traditions are widely varied and have been chronicled by Dr. Donald B. Kraybill, scholar of Anabaptist traditions. Kraybill is a faculty member in Elizabethtown College’s sociology and religious studies departments. Kraybill is also the series editor of Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.

The wedding season is a festive time of the year for the Amish. The whole community can relax and spend time together after the harvest concludes. A wedding marks the passage into adulthood in Amish communities. Young people usually get married in their early twenties. The wedding ceremony is one of the most important traditions in the Amish community because marriage symbolizes community growth through the family the newlyweds will create.

Weddings in Amish communities are not arranged, but do require both bride and groom to be members of the church. They also require a blessing from the church, the bride’s verification of her wishes and the groom’s good standing.

A typical Amish wedding in Lancaster County takes place on a Tuesday or a Thursday. This is because it takes a day to prepare for the wedding and a day to clear the venue after the event. Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to hold a wedding because they do not interfere with Sunday church services. If a wedding ceremony took place on a Monday, there would be no time to set up the venue after the church service ended. If it was on a Saturday, there would be no time to clear the wedding trappings away before Sunday.

Amish weddings are traditionally confined to the months of October and November because these months immediately follow the traditional harvest season when there is less work to do. They are enormous affairs that bring much of the community together to plan and celebrate.

Recently, this tradition has been changing, with many in Amish communities making the transition from farming to small businesses. Currently, the wedding season tends to extend into December or even January, depending on the number of weddings taking place during a given season. Weddings do not normally take place earlier than mid-October, though. August and September are too hot for celebrations that can bring close to 300 people together in a single building.

The traditional Amish wedding is typically held at the home of the bride. They will not necessarily be held inside her family’s home, but will be held in a tent or outbuilding, like a barn or shop on the property. These weddings involve a three-hour church service with the marital ceremony taking place at the very end of the service. “The service itself is a sober and plain event with no candles, flowers, veils, rings, tuxedos or special music,” Kraybill wrote.

The festivities after the ceremony involve lunch, games, songs and dinner. The dinner usually consists of mashed potatoes, creamed celery, a traditional wedding dish and bread mixed with chicken, called a roast, among other things.

Typically, guests remain at the bride’s home until around midnight. It is not unusual for guests to rotate between several weddings, since there could be as many as 12 or 15 taking place on the same day.

Single men and women sit on opposite sides of the dinner table until the games and songs begin, at which point they pair up for the festivities. This is true for the wedding party’s table too. The bride and groom’s fathers head the table and the mothers and other female relatives sit on one side of the table and the male relatives opposite them.

Kraybill’s research on Amish wedding traditions can be found in his books, “The Amish of Lancaster County,” “The Riddle of Amish Culture” and “The Amish,” which he co-wrote with Karen M. Johnson-Weiner and Steven M. Nolt.