Wedding Traditions

How to help the bride and groom to a long and happy marriage

Here are some wedding traditions which could help ensure that the bridal couple will have a long and happy marriage? If they aren’t already employing the services of professional wedding planners, such as Make Our Day, to remove many of the elements of chance associated with the wedding, maybe you could remind them of some of the more time-honoured methods of promoting marital longevity.

There are a number of wedding traditions and superstitions which are said to predict how the marriage will turn out. Most people are aware of the tradition that says that a bride should wear “something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new” at her wedding to ensure a happy marriage. But did you know about some of these other superstitions?

Getting engaged is fairly straightforward. Just make sure that the engagement ring contains the bride’s birthstone and you will have good luck in your relationship.

Things get more complicated for the bride when she is putting her wedding outfit together. It’s difficult to see how a bride can manage to get to the wedding ceremony in a dress that suits her, fits and is clean, and still be happily married. It is unlucky to try on her wedding dress before the wedding day, and especially unlucky if she sees herself in a mirror fully dressed for her wedding before the ceremony. To counteract all of this, the bride that is kissed by a chimney sweep is a lucky bride (especially if she avoids getting soot on her dress), but she’s particularly lucky if she accidentally tears it on the wedding day or finds a spider in it.

The bride just can’t win. One wedding tradition says that she needs to avoid wearing pearls because they represent the tears she will cry during her marriage but, according to another, she should wear pearls at her wedding to ensure that she doesn’t cry. She should also avoid making her own dress because she’ll cry a tear for every stitch she sews. On the other hand, if she does cry at her wedding those will be the last tears she ever sheds over her marriage.

Things seem a little more straightforward for the groom. If he drops the rings during the ceremony, the marriage won’t last. But he could try to mitigate this eventuality by carrying a lucky mascot in his pocket when he sets out for the wedding, giving a coin to the first person he meets on the way, and under no circumstances returning home for anything until he is safely married.

The fact that it’s supposed to be unlucky for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony is fairly common knowledge. But did you also know that, after all the trouble she has taken to get there with her outfit pristine and undamaged, he should avoid looking at her until she is standing beside him at the wedding if he really wants to ensure that the marriage is a happy one?

Wedding traditions can be contradictory. For instance, the weather on the wedding day is supposed to indicate whether the marriage will be successful. The weather can’t be controlled, but it might be as well to be prepared. There is a saying “happy the bride that the sun shines on” but the other types of weather also predict the future relationship.

Rain on the wedding day means that the bride will shed many tears over her marriage. Or if you prefer, it brings good luck. Or it represents the tears shed over her by the bride’s old boyfriends. Then again rain on the wedding day may mean that the couple will have many children. Take your pick!

Cloudy skies and wind predict a stormy marriage, but snow is associated with fertility and wealth, which the couple will need to support a large family.

There are many other wedding traditions and superstitions surrounding the process of getting married, but to finish with, here are two which are possibly more important than the rest put together since they are about remaining on friendly terms with the new in-laws. The groom’s mother should throw a pair of old shoes over (that’s OVER) the bride’s head as the couple leave the ceremony but the groom needs to take action much earlier if he wants a friendly mother-in-law. He should make her a present of a diamond as he puts the engagement ring onto his new fiancee’s finger. Many mothers-in-law may feel that it’s not too late for him to do this, even if the couple have already been married for many years!

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