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
© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos
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
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