The book was based on the Master thesis by folklorist, ethnographer, and historian of literature Nickolay Fedorovich Sumtsov (1854-1922), defended in 1880 and published in 1881. A disciple of А. А. Potebnya at the University of Kharkov, in his early works S. kept positions of the mythological school. Later, he criticized the one-sidedness of that method and went to the anthropological school, and later – to the school of borrowing.

In his work, the author calls to compare the Russian wedding ritual with the rites of the annual calendar cycle, as well as with similar rites of other nations. He distributes rites into groups and tries to determine the characteristics of the Old Slavic wedding. His method can be used for the analysis of other rituals, as well. He put a special attention at the texts of ritual songs, demonstrating his interest to the verbal components of the rites.

Most ceremonies were performed in the bride’s father’s house, and essentially constituted a ‘snitch’ and holding of the bride. The author compares wedding songs of Serbian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic traditions. They gave him information about the wedding ritual. The author was concentrated at the issues of ethnography and tried to structure the material. For example, he classified the wedding sacrifices into sacrifices to bull, ram and sheep, sheepskin, goat, pig, rooster and chicken, scrambled eggs, cottage cheese, porridge, and bread. He also wrote a separate work ‘Bread in Rites and Songs’ (1885). The author cites various interpretations of the elements of a wedding dress, for example, the bride’s wedding belt. In addition to ceremonial songs, the author also considers prayers and wedding religious songs: he differs the latter ones from prayers.

The author did not draw any theoretical conclusions from his work; the book was made as a collection of ethnographical sources.