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Schofield congratulates James and "Sallie" Cleaver on their recent wedding and tells them that she wished she could have been there. She then describes her journey via ship to South Carolina. She talks about her companion, Mary A. Sharp, and says that she "will never love her very warmly, though she may respect and esteem her." Contains edits by Schofield.

At a reception in a local gymnasium, Michele and Bob entertain their wedding guests with a traditional flirtation dance, Kozachhko Vikruchenka. The bridegroom shows off his acrobatic ability and the bride her graceful, intricate footwork., Katrina Thomas's notes: The homeland of Carpatho-Rusyns is located on the slope of the Carpathian Mountains where the borders of Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland meet. Never having had their own state, they have lived since the sixth century as a national minority in kingdoms whose borders frequently change. And yet they manage to keep their traditional customs, marrying under gilt crowns in the tradition of Eastern Rite Christianity, accompanied by Carpathian plainchant. I photographed two weddings observing various traditions, the highlight of both being the Rjadovyj, during which everyone dances with the bride, ending with the bride's mother placing a silk matron's cap, a cepec, on her daughter's head, while guests line-dancing shoulder to shoulder close in around the new wife, forming walls through which the bridegroom must fight his way to capture her and carry her away.

Members of a folk dance group, to which John belongs, provide entertainment for the wedding guests, not all of whom are of Carpatho-Rusyn lineage., Katrina Thomas's notes: The homeland of Carpatho-Rusyns is located on the slope of the Carpathian Mountains where the borders of Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland meet. Never having had their own state, they have lived since the sixth century as a national minority in kingdoms whose borders frequently change. And yet they manage to keep their traditional customs, marrying under gilt crowns in the tradition of Eastern Rite Christianity, accompanied by Carpathian plainchant. I photographed two weddings observing various traditions, the highlight of both being the Rjadovyj, during which everyone dances with the bride, ending with the bride's mother placing a silk matron's cap, a cepec, on her daughter's head, while guests line-dancing shoulder to shoulder close in around the new wife, forming walls through which the bridegroom must fight his way to capture her and carry her away.

Libby has been raised on a chair by her girlfriends so that she can wave a banner at her husband Joseph, over the top of the mechitsa, the dividing screen which separates men from women in the reception hall., Katrina Thomas's notes: More than populate Israel, there are an estimated 5.7 million Jews in the U.S. In addition to two nationality backgrounds, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, they belong to four movements, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Hasidic. Jewish weddings today combine elements, dating back to biblical times when two separate rites were performed, perhaps months or years apart, known in Jewish law, as kiddushin and nissu'in. The first is betrothal, during which the ring is given, and the second, the actual marriage. Over a period of twenty-five years, I photographed a variety of weddings, some with hundreds of guests and some small, all of them essentially the same but different in regard to details. All couples are united under a chuppah, both rites performed at one time. In general, traditions are kept more reverently by Jews than are customs retained more casually by other religions and ethnic groups.

Two rotund men, with orange-painted faces, and dressed as a peasant man and woman, are determined to bar the way of the newlyweds until they receive their due. They dance around the couple, demanding handouts of money and liquor., Katrina Thomas's notes: These highlanders from the Tatra mountains, emigrating since WWII to a neighborhood in Chicago, have built there a community hall in mountain-style Gorale architecture. They are the only Poles in the U.S. who retain a wedding culture dress, customs, unique music, and songs in dialect preserved in the isolated region of their homeland. Historically shepherds, the men sing from deep in their chests and play stringed instruments, which they call fiddles, their voices and music echoing from mountainsides while their sheep grow fat. Traditions have not changed appreciably since the 19th century. The couple marrying is accompanied by fiddlers to the nuptial rite and into the church, to the wedding breakfast, and into the evening reception. Gypsy impersonators may bar the newlyweds from the wedding breakfast until given the fare they demand. During the reception, fiddlers play polkas, mazurkas, czardas, two-step, and even rock 'n roll for dancing. At the close of the celebration, an extensive farewell, lasting more than an hour, is the cepoviny, played out in music and song, releasing the bride to her husband, only after many warnings to her and jokes about married life.

For the festive mehndi, celebrated before her Muslim marriage, Sophia entered under a long shawl known as a dopatta, a gold sari canopy that had been her mother's wedding veil. Her hands and feet have been delicately decorated with henna. Now she is given seven green and gold glass bangles for good luck by seven happily married women., Katrina Thomas's notes: Few Pakistanis emigrated until 1971 but half a million live in the U.S. today. In Pakistan most marriages are arranged, the Muslim men and women celebrating in separate rooms or tents. I photograph two weddings, but agree not to release photos of the arranged marriage because although the sexes celebrate together, the women of the Ahmadiyya movement, a strict Muslim sect, must not have their pictures published. The marriage illustrated was not arranged. The bride and bridegroom, schooled in both Pakistan and the West, fell in love. They are the children of international parents, each with a Pakistani father and a mother of mixed heritage. During a pre-wedding henna evening in a private apartment, they retain but reorder wedding traditions of the Sindh province. On the following day, they are married in a Muslim nuptial rite. Their wedding is celebrated at a diplomatic reception that evening.

Maye Chow waits on the threshold of the bridegroom's house while the shaman inside invokes the household and ancestral spirits with prayers and sacrifices, preparing them to welcome her as a wife., Katrina Thomas's notes: Also known as Iu Mien, a tribal people settled in farming communities in southeast Asia until disrupted by the Vietnam war, when they came here from Thai refugee camps in the early 1980's. Today perhaps 50, 000 Mien live in the U.S., most of them in the states of Washington, Oregon and California. When they first arrived, I photograph several weddings, including Big Weddings, known as tom ching ta, celebrated for three days, catnapping in my car in front of the bridegroom's house so as not to miss any of the day and night ceremonies. The bride may already have birthed several children fathered by the bridegroom, and whether celebrated for one day or three, a Mien wedding is no more and no less than a transfer of the bride to her new home with rites to insure her acceptance by the bridegroom's household spirits. During the period of an overnight or three days, many meals are prepared, principally for the bride's extensive family, perhaps 60 or more, and also for friends. I photograph rites that welcome the bride, and for "Big Weddings, an important all-night bowing ceremony, performed by the bridegroom to ancestral spirits, to living relatives and to all family members.

Early on the morning of their wedding, Sam Ath and Savath are blessed by a Buddhist priest who has come to their city apartment from upstate New York., Katrina Thomas's notes: The Cambodians I photographed are newly arrived refugees, having fled the communist Khmer Rouge after the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975. Many came without their families, who had been killed or had remained to guard their properties. In the U.S. Khmer weddings usually take place on a single day. I photographed four, three on a single day, one lasting two days. All are abbreviated when compared to those in the home country. With little guidance, they try to keep traditions for a proper celebration but without their native substances or their own foods. Rather than falling in love, all the couples were matched by others and most weddings are conducted by their own people without the licenses to do so legally but able to marry them in the eyes of their own community.

Roles may be interchanged between families when a bride and groom are cousins. Mahmoud's mother being absent, his father brought jewelry for Mariam which her own mother, aided by the bridegroom's sister, hands to her son-in-law to put on her daughter., Katrina Thomas's notes: I photographed Arab Muslim celebrations billed as engagements, henna evenings and weddings in Brooklyn, NY and also in Dearborn, MI, which maintains the largest concentration of Arabs in the U.S. Couples may be matched; some meet at family weddings. Muslims make a distinction between marriage and a wedding. The marriage solemnizes a written or an oral agreement, al-mahr, money awarded to the bride by the bridegroom, and usually takes place privately in the home. It is not photographable because the bride and groom remain in separate rooms. Presumably, the marriage is not consummated until after the wedding, which announces the union of man and wife to the community. It takes place any time from a few hours after the marriage to a few years. A henna evening may be celebrated before either or both. The bridegroom's family pays for all festivities. What is distinctive besides the lack of alcohol, except clandestinely, and the sexes being divided so that women dance on one side of the hall and men dance -- dipping, hopping, stamping their feet -- on the other side, is that the bride and groom do not participate. They sit like royalty on a dais presiding over their jubilant guests.

Irene and Nicolas are married outdoors in the Ukrainian Catholic rite by two priests. On their heads they wear evergreen wreaths which serve as crowns for a king and queen on this day., Katrina Thomas's notes: Ukrainians number perhaps a million today in the U.S., and even more in Canada. When the Ukraine was under Soviet subjugation, those who settled abroad were determined to revive their culture in a new land, and pass on relevant customs to future generations. To this end they establish Plast, their scouts organization, to which both boys and girls belong, and which fosters relationships that may end in marriage. Although most embrace the Orthodox Christian faith, the weddings I am able to photograph are Eastern Rite Catholic. Before the nuptials, the parents bless their children, using bread or icons. A bridal procession follows, and at the feast, instead of sharing a white wedding cake, they have their own ritual breads, korovai, which are decorated with twigs, herbs, flowers, and symbols in dough. The celebration ends soon after the maiden bride accepts the Slavic headgear of a married woman. However, today this rite is often omitted. Ukrainians, seeking a better life, still come to the U.S.