Regional Wedding (Pennsylvania), Barnesboro, PA, 1991

Keeping a version of the Slavic custom for replacing a maiden's bridal wreath with a matron's kerchief, Chris chases his wife around the dance floor until she, without removing her veil, acquiesces to having a gauzy kerchief tied under her chin. When they depart later, Stacy pulls off both kerchief and veil before Chris picks her up, and carries her out of the hall into a decorated car with tin cans rattling behind it.

Katrina Thomas's notes: Regional customs prove more elusive than finding ethnic weddings but crop up when least expected. In one instance, a widow and widower from New Orleans, while walking in New York City from their nuptials to the reception, observe their hometown custom of a second line, originating at jazz funerals when mournful music turns to joyous. The other example is a couple of mixed heritage, married in a rural community in Pennsylvania, where those of every ethnicity attend religious services in a Ukrainian church, built by the first immigrants. At the reception they celebrate a variety of customs, the origin of which they do not know but which have become the pattern for the community's country weddings.