Everything has a beginning, everything that becomes a tradition was once done for the first time and when we talk about weddings, that tradition is apparently the longest and oldest. There is a reason why you slip in a wedding ring in the ring finger. Every ceremony you perform has a meaning to it western wedding tradition, has it’s own history. Let’s take a tour into the past!
In Australia, particularly, English, Scottish and Irish wedding traditions are followed. How much ever modern the brides are, they still choose to wear the traditional white wedding dress. Some people credit Queen Victoria to have started this tradition, others say it was even older than that popularized by Ann of Britanny in 1499. Both these ladies were thought to have started the tradition of the white wedding dress, when they tossed their bouquets! Oh! yes, that reminds us of the tradition of tossing bouquets…it started when having a piece of the bridal dress was considered to be lucky, so people thronged to get a piece of her dress, resulting in it’s complete ruin. Later, to prevent this, tossing of the bride’s things began and thus began tossing of the bouquet.
Another very important western wedding tradition, which initiates the promise of wedding, is the wedding ring, worn on the ring finger. There are two sides to this too. One is the romantic story which says that the ring finger, has a vein running through the heart, hence connected to love. The second story is not romantic, it is more practical. It states that the rings were exchanged with an idea to give economic safety to both the parties since these rings were made of precious metals!
A bible is given as a wedding gift by many people, it started when it was believed to be a gift of knowledge and virtue. It was meant to become a family souvenir and most of the times there was a section in the Bible to record the births and deaths in the family. So it became a western wedding tradition too! Then, let’s talk about the wedding cake and how that originated. It as believed in the olden times that breaking the cake on the bride’s head was considered to be a sign of fertility.
Moving further on to the western wedding tradition of using flowers in the wedding ceremonies, it began with the knights wearing a flower of the color of his lady’s dress to the battles as a symbol of love and protection. Gradually it developed into a tradition to use certain colored or type of flowers at the weddings, where each color and type had a meaning attached to it. Like Lily meant truth and honor, Orchid meant beauty etc as for colors, white meant truth, pink and read meant love etc.
Lastly, comes the wedding kiss! In ancient times a kiss meant sealing agreements, bonds and deals so a kiss in the wedding meant, sealing the bond of marriage! So these were a few peeks into the origins of the western wedding traditions followed today.
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