Greek wedding
It is common for wedding to start with engaging. The Greek wedding is not an exception of this rule but another confirmation for it. So, there is a woman a man have chosen for her to become his wife. He speaks to his parents and they give their agreement to marry her. After that the matchmakers are chosen, that will visit house of bride and inform her about fiancé's intentions. As a rule the matchmaker is a woman, a relative for fiancé. It is common that a matchmaker is a relative of fiancé but she or he may also be a friend of him.
There is no romance in engaging ceremony the matchmaker performs at house of the future bride. The talks are mostly deal with ransom fiancé has to pay for his bride. They wonder whether the ransom is only clothes, jewels, furniture and other stuff or there are the immovable properties. The ransom is of great importance as it indicates the well-fare of future husband and so the prestige of his family and of family of his bride. If a man has nothing to pay for his wife no one will allow him to marry her. Though, there are cases known when the fake kidnapping of bride was performed.
The fake kidnapping means that a bride was agree her future husband kidnapped her. It was the way out for a pure fiancé who had no means to pay the ransom. Though the kidnapping was performed with agreement of bride there were a number of troubles connected with the kidnapping. Sure, parents of the brides were greatly displeased with such action and sometimes they remained angry with both and gave them no forgiveness.
The engaging is performed in several months or even a year before the wedding. Once the matchmaker had performed his or her task, the parents of fiancé pay a visit for parents of bride. There is also no romance in that visit. They set the wedding agreement and implement exchanging with ring. Since that day the boy and girl are considered as fiancé and bride and they are allowed to see each other. The fiancé is also allowed to visit his future wife, though they are not allowed to stay in private. There are a lot of other restriction for future husband and wife and those restrictions may not be broken.
In case if any of them (no matter fiancé or bride) will brake any of those rules the engaging is considered to be broken. It is the main rule and it is rather strict. The engaging has to be broken even in case if both sides don't want to do that. The wedding starts the seven days before church wedding ceremony, on Sunday. On that day future husband sends his future wife a present as a message that soon wedding will occur. Among the presents he sends her there should be henna, the bride will be painted with. He also has to pay a visit in order to reveal his respect for parents of the bride.