Lindsey and I are going to meld some traditional stuff as well as some new stuff at our wedding. It’s going to be pretty cool for those involved, as well as the guests. However, when deciding exactly what traditions I want to keep I found it best to look up the origins of that tradition. I found some cool stuff. In fact, I started looking at other wedding traditions not planned for our ceremony.
I bet you can see where this is heading. If you said, “A top five list?” then you, my dearest reader, are correct!
Five Famous Wedding Traditions & The Story Behind Them
- “Here Comes the Bride,” also known as “The Bridal Chorus” – This tune comes from an opera written by Wagner called “Lohengrin” that he wrote in the mid 1800s. According to my little Internet search on the history of “Here Comes the Bride”, the scene in Lohengrin that features the song is all sexy and steamy. Awesome.
- The reason behind the wedding party – This is kind of cool. Back in the day, groomsmen were used as body guards for the bride or to fend off the angry mob of disapproving future in laws. Bridesmaids, unsurprisingly, were traditionally there to cater to the bride’s every need.
- Why do brides wear veils? – The history of the bridal veil is rooted in religious traditions of disguising the bride from evil spirits. However, if one really wants to protect themselves from an evil spirit looking for a bride, won’t the white dress and attention give her away? I guess these spirits are easier to fool than we thought.
- Why is it called a “honeymoon?” – According to the Interwebs, we call it a honeymoon because the first month of marriage is the sweetest. That’s kind of a glass half empty way of looking at it if you ask me…
- The history of the garter toss – This is a good one. According to Snopes.com, the garter toss signified the public display of a man taking his woman as his possession and announced to the world that she was indeed his property.
If you have some extra time, then I encourage you to Google search any of the common wedding traditions to find out the crazy stories of their origins.
I had heard a different origin of honey moon dealing with time and drinks so I went and found this. The mead part is there but so is some more interesting info.
Today, the tradition of a honeymoon following nuptials has, long way from its original meaning. Today’s “happy ending” to the wedding event is a far cry from its much different beginnings. The word honeymoon has its roots in the Norse word “hjunottsmanathr” which was anything but blissful. Northern European history describes the abduction of a bride from neighboring village. It was imperative, that the abductor, the husband to be, take his bride to be into hiding for period of time. His friends assured his and her safe keeping and kept their whereabouts unknown. Once the bride’s family gave up their search, the bride groom returned to his people. This folkloric explanation presumably is the origin of today’s honeymoon, for its original meaning meant hiding.
The Scandinavian word for honeymoon is derived, in part, from an ancient Northern European custom in which newlyweds, for the first month of their married life, drank a daily cup of honeyed wine called mead. The ancient practices of kidnaping of bride and drinking the honeyed wine date back to the history of Atilla, king of the Asiatic Huns from A.D. 433 to A.D. 453.
So that leaves us with the question of where the “moon” in the word “honeymoon” originates. One piece of folklore relates that the origin of the word moon comes from a cynical inference. To the Northern Europeans the terms referred to the body’s monthly cycle and, its combination with honey, suggested that not all moon’s of married life were as sweet as the first. British prose writers and poets, in the 16th and 17th centuries, often made use of the Nordic interpretation of honeymoon as a waxing and waning of marital affection.
As it is with many of our wedding customs, this one also has an alternative explanation of its origin. The term “honeymoon,” we are told, comes from an old northern European custom in which newlyweds would, for a month, consume a daily cup of mead, a brew that is made from honey.
Well I’ll be… I didn’t see that one. Interesting. I’m glad they changed the word. “Hjunottsmanathr” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.