Wedding Customs Around The World

Wedding Customs Around The World: Every culture marks marriage with rituals meant to bless the couple, unite families and ward off bad luck, from tying hands and breaking glass to sharing tea and jumping brooms. Many familiar Western traditions, like white dresses, diamond rings and bridesmaids in matching outfits, are surprisingly recent or began as protection against evil spirits. Together these customs reveal how societies have thought about love, property, family and fate.

Queen Victoria: When she married Prince Albert in 1840 in a white silk satin gown, she set a fashion that made white the standard bridal color. Before then, brides typically wore their best dress in any color, often red or blue.

Archduke Maximilian of Austria: In 1477 he gave Mary of Burgundy a ring set with diamonds shaped into the letter M, the first well documented diamond engagement ring in history.

A Diamond Is Forever: Copywriter Frances Gerety wrote this slogan for De Beers in 1947, and the campaign helped turn diamond engagement rings from a luxury into an expected tradition across America.

Handfasting: In this old Celtic and Scottish custom, a couple's hands were bound together with cord or ribbon during their vows, which is one popular explanation for the phrase 'tying the knot.'

Vena Amoris: Ancient Romans believed a 'vein of love' ran directly from the fourth finger of the left hand to the heart, which is why wedding rings are still worn there, even though no such vein exists.

Flammeum: Roman brides wore a flame colored veil, and attendants dressed like the bride to confuse jealous spirits, an idea often linked to the origin of bridesmaids in matching outfits.

Confarreatio: The most sacred form of Roman marriage centered on a special cake of spelt, and later Roman weddings broke bread over the bride's head for fertility, an ancestor of the modern wedding cake.

Juno: June weddings are often traced to Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage, though practical reasons played a role too, as spring bathing season and crop schedules made June convenient in Europe.

Honeymoon: A popular myth says newlyweds drank honey mead for a month, but the word first appeared in 16th century English as a sly joke that affection, like the moon, is full at first and soon wanes.

Frigg: The Norse goddess of marriage gave her name to Friday, and Friday was considered a lucky day for weddings in Norse tradition, according to popular accounts drawn from Scandinavian folklore.

Something Old, Something New: This rhyme comes from Victorian England, and its often forgotten last line tells the bride to put a silver sixpence in her shoe for wealth.

Polterabend: On the night before a German wedding, guests smash piles of porcelain at the couple's home for luck, and the newlyweds must clean up the shards together as their first joint task.

Mehndi: In South Asian weddings the bride's hands and feet are painted with intricate henna designs, and the groom's name is often hidden in the pattern for him to find on the wedding night.

Jumping The Broom: Enslaved African Americans, who were denied legally recognized marriages, used this ritual to publicly mark their unions. Similar broom customs also existed in Britain, and the tradition was revived after the 1977 TV series Roots.

San San Kudo: In traditional Japanese Shinto weddings, the bride and groom take three sips each from three cups of sake, nine sips in total, to seal their bond.

Chinese Tea Ceremony: Newlyweds kneel and serve tea to their parents and elders, who in return give blessings and red envelopes, formally welcoming the bride into the groom's family.

Breaking The Glass: Jewish weddings end with the groom stepping on a glass, a reminder of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem even at moments of joy, followed by guests shouting 'Mazel tov!'

Gretna Green: After England's Marriage Act of 1753 required parental consent for those under 21, eloping couples fled to this Scottish border village, where blacksmiths famously performed weddings over the anvil.

Lobola: In many Southern African cultures, the groom's family negotiates a bride price with the bride's family, traditionally paid in cattle, a custom meant to bind the two families together.

Las Arras: In Spanish and Latin American weddings, the groom gives the bride 13 gold coins blessed by a priest, symbolizing Christ and the twelve apostles and a promise to provide for the household.

Rushnyk: In Ukrainian weddings the couple stands on an embroidered ritual towel, and folklore says whoever steps on it first will be the head of the household.

Money Spraying: At Nigerian weddings, guests shower dancing newlyweds with banknotes, sometimes covering the dance floor in cash as a show of blessing and celebration.

Croquembouche: The traditional French wedding cake is a tower of cream filled pastry puffs bound with caramel, a dessert popularized by famed 19th century pastry chef Marie Antoine Carême.

Victoria, Princess Royal: At her 1858 wedding, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter walked out to Mendelssohn's Wedding March, helping make it, along with Wagner's Bridal Chorus, the standard wedding music across the English speaking world.