Living in Nigeria and getting married traditionally will expose you to a lot of new traditions that you may not have known even as a local but there are so many traditions that we are equally unexposed to by not researching other cultures and ways of life outside the country. Here are some interesting wedding facts that you don’t know:
For Good Luck
• The Hindu regard rain as good luck on their wedding days
• The Egyptians pinch brides on their wedding days for good luck
• Throwing peas at newlyweds is a tradition of the Czech
• A Moroccan tradition involves future brides bathing in milk as a skin purification process before their wedding ceremony
• English people consider spiders found in wedding dresses to be good luck!
All for the Show!
• Over 7,000 couples get married each day in the United States
• The ‘posting of banns’ tradition of the Catholic Church resulted as a means of ensuring that the couple were not related
• The bride stands on the groom’s left hand during a Christian wedding ceremony so that the right hand is free to ward off any lurking suitors
• The two busiest marriage days in Las Vegas are Valentine’s day and New Year’s Day: Eloping is a thing!
• Stag parties, also known as Bachelor parties, originated from the Spartan soldiers who threw parties full of debauchery to let go of their bachelor status finally
Family and Food
• In Egypt, the bride’s family make themselves available to cook after the wedding so that the couple can rest
• The cake from Queen Victoria’s wedding was so heavy; it weighed over 300 pounds!
• An old tradition says that if a younger sister gets hitched first, the older sister must dance without any shoes at the wedding to attract a potential husband
• Cakes with tiers became a thing for weddings while trying to play a game involving the couple kissing over the tiers of cake; this is why wedding cakes are made higher successively
• Single women may have dreams revealing their future husbands if they fall asleep with a slice of the groom’s cake under their pillow
Whether legends, traditions or folklores, it is evident that the circumstances surrounding weddings have evolved and varied according to location but always have the couple’s best interest at heart!
Photo Credit: bp.blogspot.com