From it’s good luck if it rains on your wedding day to the groom not seeing the bride before the ceremony, there is no secret that there are many traditions surrounding a wedding – some dating back centuries. However, there are also a few weird myths or legends attached to weddings in different parts of the world.
We’ve highlighted cultural traditions in the past and recently read a few stories about wedding traditions and superstitions, so we wanted to explore a few crazy ideas and the history and additional folklore behind them.
- An English old wives’ tale believes that finding a spider in a bride’s wedding dress means good luck.
- For good luck, Egyptian women pinch the bride on her wedding day.
- Research brought us to a story that involved a bride teasing another girl because she did not have any marriage proposals yet. When the girl, fed up with the insults, went to attack the bride too many people got in the way and she was only able to pinch the bride’s knee. After the wedding, a suitor, impressed by the girl’s attitude, asked her to marry him.
- In Denmark, brides and grooms traditionally cross-dressed to confuse evil spirits.
- Though our research did not bring us to any definitive answer, we assume this is for the same reason bridal parties came into tradition, to confuse the evil spirit trying to kidnap the bride on her wedding day.
- If the younger of two sisters marries first, the older sister must dance barefoot at the wedding or risk never landing a husband.
- In China’s Yugur culture, grooms shoot their future brides with a bow and arrow, minus the arrow head, three times. After, the groom breaks all three arrows to ensure the couple stays in love forever.
- To test the true strength and character of a groom, Korean tradition dictates that the groom has his feet beaten with fish or a cane before his first night as a married man.
- In France, newlyweds were forced to drink leftovers out of a toilet bowl – the idea being to give the couple strength before their wedding night. Now, chocolate and champagne have replaced the leftovers, but oddly a toilet is still involved.
- While dancing, an Irish bride must keep both of her feet on the floor at all times while dancing with her groom.
- This, naturally, is because of the belief that evil fairies will come and sweep the bride away if she does not.
Stay tuned to Part 2 for more!
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