Birthdays

When invited to celebrate a birthday you are expected to bring a gift to the birthday person. Presents are to be presented gift-wrapped nicely and to be opened right away, if you would receive a gift on your birthday.

Also the celebrated one is to begin cutting the cake after having blown out the candles on top of the cake. Most common is to serve coffee and cake at informal parties during the day but bigger celebrations like becoming 50 or 60 years people normally tend to either have big parties or place an ad in the local newspaper that they are abroad, which is to be respected, and do not want to celebrate their birthday.

Weddings
In the invitation there usually is something mentioned about dress-code, if not then you are to make your won judgement on the importance and style of occasion. Summer weddings usually tend to be a bit more casual than winter-weddings. Women like to wear hats and more and more common is growing the habit of the mother of the bride and the groom to wear hats.
A quite common, but sad habit is for women to wear white at weddings, but it is only the bride who should be dressed in white, it is not the other female guests. It is the happy day for couple getting married, and they should stand out and be special..
Gifts are sometimes bought according to so called wedding-lists so you do not have to worry more about it that to make sure you pick a present from the list and pay for it and the shop in charge takes care of everything else.
If you yourself give away the present, the gifts are placed on a special table to be opened later on by the bride and groom at the reception.
At weddings you are not to take flowers with you at all, and the presents are to be either sent in advance or put on a table to be opened later by the bride and groom during the reception
Hats are very popular at weddings and should match the personality and dress of the wearer. Hats can be worn during the ceremony no matter if in church or at the registrar’s office, and they can still be worn during a reception during the day to be taken off when the dancing begins at the reception. Or to be taken off at wedding receptions .beginning after 6 pm.
When the happy couple leave the registrar’s Office or church the Finnish custom it to throw rice-grains on them to wish them wealth and fertility. This is a pagan-custom that has survived to our days.

In the old times the bride and groom were not to meet on the night before the wedding to not have a bad and unlucky marriage. The bride’s dress is still white, but today not always as a sign of virginity as from the beginning. Even elder women with children from previous marriage marrying for the second time are dressed in snow-white gowns. The happy couple gets shoes and cans tied behind their car on leaving here too.
And the more and more Internationally common old saying about: “Something old, something borrowed, something blue, something new” seems to be the thing here in Finland too.
In the old times it was always the father, or if no father available some other male relative of the bride that gave away the bride to the groom in church, but today you often see couples walking to the aisle together, and having lived together for many years and having children together it might seem a bit strange to walk down the aisle with your father all of a sudden as you have already tasted the life of married for some time.
The first dance at the reception has traditionally always been a waltz, and great care is taken to learn to dance for the occasion. There are even special wedding-waltz courses available. The first waltz is the one with the father of the bride, when the newly wed husband cuts in and takes over his new wife from his father-in-law. And do not forget the general rule of the last dance! You can read about it in the dating-section.
The cake is cut by the newly weds and it is said that he or she who holds on top of their spouses hand is the one to take the lead in that marriage, it is said according to the tradition.