Orthodox weddings can’t happen just any day you want. The Church restricts when the Mystery of Crowning can be celebrated, and if you’re planning a wedding at St. Michael’s, you’ll need to work around the liturgical calendar.
Weddings don’t happen during the four major fasting seasons: Great Lent, the Apostles’ Fast (which starts after All Saints and runs to June 29), the Dormition Fast (August 1-14), and the Nativity Fast (November 15 through December 24). They’re also not celebrated on Wednesdays or Fridays throughout the year, except during certain festal periods when the fast is lifted. You can’t get married on major feast days or their eves either, so September 14 (the Elevation of the Cross), August 29 (the Beheading of St. John the Baptist), and the eves of the Twelve Great Feasts are all off limits.
Why all these restrictions? It comes down to the Church’s rhythm of feasting and fasting. Marriage is a sacrament of joy. It’s the restoration of paradise, the union of Christ and the Church made visible in two people becoming one flesh. The prayers are full of celebration, the crowns are placed, the couple walks around the Gospel book while we sing “O Holy Martyrs.” It’s a feast.
But fasting seasons are something else entirely. Great Lent is about repentance. We’re prostrating, confessing, stripping away everything that separates us from God. The Dormition Fast prepares us to honor the Theotokos’s falling asleep. These aren’t times for parties and receptions and three-tiered cakes. The Church keeps the seasons distinct because they serve different purposes in our healing.
Wednesdays and Fridays carry their own weight. Every Wednesday we remember Judas’s betrayal. Every Friday we stand at the foot of the Cross. These are days of mourning, not celebration. To place a wedding on Friday would be like throwing a birthday party at a funeral. The tones don’t match.
Most parishes prefer Sunday afternoons for weddings. There’s a practical reason, people have already come to Liturgy and received Communion that morning. But there’s something deeper too. Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the day of Resurrection. When we celebrate a wedding on Sunday, we’re connecting this new family to the Eucharistic life of the Church, to the day when heaven touches earth most clearly. Some parishes will do Saturday weddings, but usually with a time restriction so the service doesn’t run into Great Vespers after sundown, when Sunday has liturgically begun.
I’ve seen folks from Baptist backgrounds get frustrated by these rules. Back at First Baptist you could get married any Saturday the fellowship hall was available. But we’re not trying to be difficult. The Church has kept this rhythm for centuries because it protects something important, the integrity of both fasting and feasting. If you can get married any day, then no day is special. If fasting seasons don’t really mean anything, then they stop forming us.
Can your bishop grant an exception? Yes. It’s called economia, and it’s used in grave pastoral circumstances. Maybe someone’s deploying overseas with the military. Maybe there’s a serious family situation that makes waiting impossible. But economia is exactly that, an exception, not the norm. You’d work with Fr. Michael who would petition the Metropolitan. It’s not something to request just because you’ve already booked the reception venue.
If you’re planning a wedding at St. Michael’s, talk to your priest early. I mean really early, not three months out. The liturgical calendar is going to shape your options more than the availability of the Beaumont Country Club. You might find that the date you had in mind falls during a fast, or on the eve of Theophany, or on a Friday. Better to know that before you’ve put down deposits.
The Church isn’t trying to make your life harder. She’s trying to make your marriage part of something bigger than a single day, part of the rhythm of salvation, the cycle of repentance and celebration that shapes us into the image of Christ. Your wedding day matters. But so does the day before it, and the season it falls in, and the fasts that prepare us to truly feast.
