30 PHOTOS of Soviet weddings

History
YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA
Bridal buyouts, wedding feasts in gyms, racing horse ‘troikas’, dancing to accordion music - we have all that and more, as we take you on a photographic tour of Soviet weddings, spanning decades.

1. Village wedding. Feast in a hut. 1940s  

2. Wedding in the 1950s

3. Newlyweds Marusya and Vasil Makarenko, 1950s  

4. The Ukrainian SSR, 1960s 

5. Leningrad, 1965-1979

6. ‘But the childhood stays with us’, 1965 

7. Azeri wedding, 1965

8. On a chariot, 1967 

9. Guests at the wedding, Ukrainian SSR, 1960s 

10. The wedding of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space 

11. Kamchatka Region, 1967 

12. At the wedding palace, 1967

13. Uzbek wedding

14. Construction workers’ ‘golden anniversary, 1969 

15. ‘Up in the clouds’, 1969 

16. ‘Gaze’, 1970s 

17. Before tying the knot, 1970s 

18. Car decorations, 1974

19. ‘Bridal buyout’ village-style, 1974-1976

20. Accordionist at a wedding, 1975

21. Komsomol wedding, 1975

22. Lenin kolkhoz wedding, 1975 

23. ‘Happiness’. Moscow, 1978

24. Celebration, 1970s 

25. Baikal–Amur Mainline

26. Demonstrative ‘alcohol-free wedding’. The format never really took off! 1986

27. Feast, 1986

28. First morning, 1987 год 

29. In Moscow

30. First snow. 1990