My earliest memories of my Yaiyai is of her sitting in her chair sewing Greek doilies for all her grand-daughters who will one day be beautiful nifis. “They are for your prika” she would say, and then mum would tell me that i wouldn’t get them until i was married.
So what is a prika anyway?
Some people call it a Glory Box or and others know it as a Dowry. It can be an actual box that the bride takes with her when she is married, or just a name given to all of the stuff (tea towels, linen etc) that you get before you are married. I have attached a picture of my glory box which was once my mothers. It is a large hand-carved wooden box full of things that i am collecting for when i move out of home.
Gia from It’s All Greek To Me has written in her blog about the use of a dowry in a traditional Greek wedding:
“The Wednesday before the wedding is the day the bride invites her relatives to get the dowry ready. For those of you who do not know about dowries, basically they are made up of the linen for the new couple’s home, which the bride’s mother has collected over the years, while waiting for her daughter to marry. The bride’s sisters, friends and cousins separate the linen and tie it up in small parcels with colourful ribbons and again people arrive to gaze upon the beautiful bedding, the handmade tablecloths, the colourful towels, the expensive carpets that are all set up in one room for all to see.“
There is also an interesting history about dowry’s on wikipedia you may like to read. It explains in detail the purpose of a dowry how it has changed over time and how it is used differently in other cultures.
♦
Do you have a Prika?
What does it look like and what does it have inside?
♦
Related Topic You Might Like:
Sia Aristidou is fascinated by the rituals and traditions celebrated in Greek culture. Sia writes about love, marriage, family and tradition and sells beautiful handmade wedding gifts at the Greek Wedding Shop.
Connect with Sia on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram or subscribe to the Greek Weddings & Traditions blog. If you want to learn more about Greek food and Greek cooking, then join the Greek Cooking Challenge.
Learn More About Greek Weddings & Traditions
Subscribe to the Blog and Follow Us:
Greek Weddings & Traditions 
In the old days jewelerry was mainly given by the girls family to the girl(the bride) as a sign of how wealthy they were or basically it was part of her proika. I do not know if you are aware of it but besides the proika the brides family usually paid a sum of money or gave a piece of land or some animals or all the above together to the groom so he would marry the girl.
By Tammy Stinson in Ten Greek Wedding Traditions:
“Dowry. Although the idea of a dowry may seem obsolete to some people, it is still a Greek tradition. The mother of the bride usually spends years collecting a variety of things from sheets to towels and other household items for her daughter’s marriage. The dowry enables the bride to set up housekeeping.”
Proika is an obsolete (or not?) wedding Greek custom associated with the compensation of a man for marrying a woman . It has been in fact provided as a “collateral” from the girl’s family to the man who would marry her. Since women in Greece have been traditionally perceived as “second order” citizens, their families used to offer “proika” in order to secure that the potential husbands would marry them…!!!
However, It was not only associated with women but also with men. For instance, if a girl was a member of an affluent family, then, the man may be also required to prove that he would be able to secure a high status of living for their daughter. As a matter of fact, this custom is still applied by a large number of Greeks…
In the old years part of the proika could have being also kitchen-ware, only the richest families gave jewelerry.
Normally now it’s a house or family stuff(from grandmothers)
The following information is from WeddingChannel.com
“The paying of a dowry is no longer common, but many modern couples and their families choose to include symbolic gestures to represent the practices of old. A Greek or Greek-American bride’s family or friends might celebrate by throwing money on her bed for good luck. One Greek-American bride’s attendants made her bed with gold and silver satin sheets for her final night’s sleep as a single woman, to show her how much they treasured her.”
A Proika is mainly a combination of what was written. In the olden days, but not too old, my parents’ age and grandparents’ ages, the Proika was when the two families got together before the word of the engagement was announced and spoke of the marriage as a business deal. The families in order for the marriage to take place would agree on money, land, olive trees, crop, and / or a house given to the groom (for the couple). The second part of the Proika was for the bride, where the collections of linens, beddings, hand-crocheted doilies and tableclothes were given to her on the Wednesday before the wedding, layed and displayed in her childhood bedroom. However, in modern times the Proika is more so that the Bride’s family pays for the Wedding and offers a down payment on a home, or both families help out the couple in the downpayment of their first home to get started. These traditions are definitely still followed in Greece and majority in the United States, Canada and other countries Greeks live in to uphold our traditions.
So the bride’s family pays the Groom to take her? How insulting is that?! It’s like hey, my daughter is too unattractive to actually get someone to love her, so if we give you all of this will you PLEASE take her?
And if the Groom pays for the Bride, isn’t that prostitution or slavery (at least in other civilized societies)?
Good grief, lady. Lighten up will you? No one looks at it that in 2013. What’s truly insulting is someone posting here and insulting the beliefs and customs of someone else’s culture like some narrow minded bigot!
In villages Proika can be land and money.
Stong objection to Stratos’ comment: “women in Greece have been traditionally perceived as “second order” citizens”.
This is not true and should had NEVER be mentioned by a a person of Greek origin, because women had always a very significant position in the “hierarchy” of the Greek family and the Greek society, in general.
Those who had the good luck to have a Greek grandmother, they can testify that she as been the ruler of the house. Let’s, also, not forget that metriarchy is a Greek term!
The explanation for giving proika to daughters is simple and practical: in a financial environment based on agriculture, women were not expected to go and work out in the fields but to stay at home and take care of the domestic issues. So, women were not contributing directly to the family income. And, proika was their in advanced one-time fee contribution.
I hope this clarifies the issue and eases Justice’s concerns about …prostitution and slavery.
I had a friend who lived from Athens who told me she was pressured to marry for money by her parents and didn’t know her husband very well before they married. (This was about 1985). Would she not have had ANY choice? Would there have been a courting or engagement period or would the couple be expected to live together for a “trial” period? if so, how long would the engagement and/or ttrial period be expected to last ?
Well, that depends completely on the family… 1985 is not that long ago, but if the family was too old fashioned, i understand that your friend might have had a problem. Unfortunately years ago, parents would obligate their daughter to marry the man they liked, and money would definitely be an issue… Thank God all that belongs in the past! 🙂
Thankyou for that. 28years and two (grown-up) children later, she is still maried to him but is not happy. She says she respects him as provider of their family and the father of her children but does not love him the way a wife should love her husband. I asked why she continues to live like this and she says because her parents would not be happy if she were to divorce. Is divorce frowned upon so much in Modern Athens today?
Well, Greece has moved forward since the time couples got married for money or due to family rules. In big cities like Athens that belongs to the past, and so is the idea of a divorce being “forbidden”. Unfortunately, there are remote villages where families still have a big saying on their children’s life, even if that means their marriage…
No, this IS modern Athens she lives in, not a village and her family have lived in N.W Athens for well over 30 years. As I said, it was 1985 when she had to marry as a “Business deal”, (as her father put it).
Well, obviously there still are “bright” examples of business marriages….