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5 Wedding Traditions and What They Mean

DearSugar — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0700

Something borrowed, something blue, and something . . . . totally bizarre. Don't you sometimes wonder where our weirder wedding traditions come from? From throwing rice to wearing blue, lots of things happen at weddings that I've never totally understood. Mental Floss has a fun list of eight weird origins of wedding traditions. Here are five of my favorite back stories from MF's list of bizarre traditions.

Brides wearing white. Apparently, it wasn't until Queen Victoria donned a white gown that this virginal shade became the wedding-dress color of choice. Before that, a bride was merely expected to dress in her finest finery.
Dads giving the bride away. The tradition of fathers walking daughters down the aisle actually goes back to the days when dads used female offspring as bartering tools to pay off debts or make peace.

Three more fun facts, so read more.

Tossing the bouquet. This one is hilarious: In the past, newlyweds would just sneak off to a separate room after the ceremony to consummate their union, and the wedding guests would crowd outside the door. The bride tossing her bouquet started as a way to divert guests' attention.
Saving the top of the wedding cake. Some couples save the top of their wedding cake to eat on their one-year anniversary. But the original reason people saved part of the sweet treat was so that it could be served at the first baby's christening.
Throwing rice as the couple leaves. Initially, this tradition wasn't limited to rice; guests could also opt for oats and corn. Either way, the sentiment is the same: showering the newly married couple with good fortune and fertility.

Source

Annulment Based on Bride's Fake Virginity Outrages French

LibertySugar — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:00:51 -0700

A court's decision to annul a marriage because the bride lied about being a virgin has the French worried that their secular values are under siege by religious immigrants.

The case involved a Muslim couple. Under their strict religious tradition, a woman must prove virginity on her wedding night. The court ruled that since the couple was Muslim, virginity was a prerequisite to the marriage. Thus, her misrepresentation of the requirement made the marriage invalid.

Women's rights activists say that the ruling treats women as a defected good in a commercial transaction. In addition, France's champions of secularism, who have worked to resist the religious influence of some 5 million Muslims that help make up France's population of 64 million, are outraged.

Their interpretation of secularism often leans towards forced secularism. To see how, read more.

France could be a secular state if it allowed its citizens to marry and divorce according to their own religious values. Instead, the French brand of secularism prefers no religious expression, to freedom of all religious expression - see France's ban of headscarves and other religious symbols from classrooms as an example.

It appears that once again, the French are the mirror image of their American counterparts, many of whom worry that the country's religious roots are being attacked. Do you think religious requirements should be left out of a state marriage proceeding? Or was the court correct to release the man from his contract, since he thought he was marrying a virgin?

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Group Therapy: Oh boy...Newlywed Reality Sets In

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 13:30:46 -0800

It seems we've hit our first disagreement as Newlyweds.

This is the short version:

1) His mom agreed to pay for the traditional groom responsibilities (some of the flowers and the groom's cake), and told my mom just to send her the total. Which my mom did...

2) We opened a few of the cards from the wedding before we went on our honeymoon, and a few of them had cash in them, which I put in my wallet (but did not spend on the honeymoon). I THINK I wrote on the outside of each envelope the amount of the gift.

3) My mom told his mom just to make the check payable to me, since the money for the flowers and cakes had come out of my savings account.

4) My husband calls me today and asks me if I knew about the email my mom sent his mom....I said yes, I knew his mom had wanted us to give her a total...he read off to me what was itemized on the total...then made some comment about the check being made out to me...then said he was going to deposit it in our "joint account" (which to my knowledge, we don't have yet) and keep a large portion of it for himself....then he snickered and said he was kidding.

5) Then he said his dad asked him if we'd gotten a lot of money at the wedding...he told him that no, we didn't, and his dad said he'd started to TAKE OFF HIS SHOE AND PASS IT AROUND...to which I replied, "Thank GOD he didn't" which kinda made hubby upset...and he went off about how our wedding was the first one where there was no hat/purse/shoe passed around for the guests to put money in - then he indicated that he had been a little irritated about that but hadn't said anything.

6) Then he asked me if I'd kept a record of how much money we'd gotten in cards...which, honestly, I haven't. At various showers, we've kept a list of all the gifts, but most of the money was in the cards we opened. I told him yes (which is probably a mistake).

So now I have a dilemma. I have spent some of the cash. But not much, and I'm not really sure what I spent it on. He will FLIP out if I tell him that. He's extremely tight when it comes to finances, and if this topic comes up again, how should I handle it? We've had some pretty heated discussions before about money; but we weren't married back then. I know money is one of the main sources of arguments in marriages, so if any of you married girls want to offer advice or share how you handled a similar situation, that would be great.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To be involved in more GROUP THERAPY, click here]