Economic Wedding Ideas

Weddings : Some Odd Traditions

Man and woman being together as one, for the rest of their lives.

Doesn’t it sound romantic? A man and women leave their individual homes to start a new family of their own. This is the foundation of the marriage tradition. Throughout the ages of time, having a family and being married are two notions the are so closely related, it is almost impossible to separate them.

Marriage is present in every culture in some form. Although the laws, customs, and cultures may differ, they all still recognize the union of man and woman under one roof.

Marriage has evolved in so many ways from the different cultures all throughout the world and over the ages of time. For each culture, there are different ways of celebrating marriage. No matter which nation celebrates marriage, it is always a time of great festivities of, singing, dancing, good food and various ways of celebrating with all the friends, guests and family members of the couple being united.

Along with these festivities, man has also adopted a growing number of traditions, each filled with meaning and believe it or not, they can have shocking origins.

The Origin of the Wedding Cake Long ago the tradition was for the groom’s family to make a simple cake for the bride as a gift and this has now evolved to the fabulous wedding cakes we use to celebrate with today. Before the wedding day, one of these cakes was put under the pillow of the bride. The idea behind it was that she would sleep on the cake and dream about the groom and their new life together, and this obviously would crush the cake.

This cake could also be thought of as a ’pound cake’ because it would be “pounded up” and crumbled then tossed at the couple as a sign of fertility. That is where the today’s custom of tossing rice on the bride and groom originally came from.

Wedding cakes today usually will have several layers to them. The higher the stack, the more glamorous the cake. People usually regard these arrangements as merely style. However, they were done so in the past as a symbol of fertility. Couples would stack these cakes to symbolize how many children they wished the couple to have. It was a long tradition that the more stacks in the cake the more children they would have.

Tying the Knot

You’ve heard of ’tying the knot’, that is one that has a very old origin indeed, but it did not necessarily mean being knotted together. An ancient custom was that the bride would be wrapped in sheep’s wool, draped around her body with a knot in the front of the covering. This was to symbolize virginity. Untying the knot, was the groom’s privilege during the wedding night.

Best Man or should I say, Secret Agent? The best man used to play a different role in the early middle ages. It was during tribal times that the best man was to go and get a bride from other tribes and bring her back to his people. He would usually club the tribal lady over the head and then begin to carry her back to his home tribe, sounds like something from a comic strip but it’s true. The best man would also have the responsibility to keep any angry relatives away. During these early ages, the best man would have club in hand while his friend, the groom married his newly found bride.

Current Times

Although we are less barbaric than earlier times, we still see an evolution of the wedding ceremony and its tradition. These traditions are filled with meaning and can only serve to make your wedding day more memorable.