Wedding Traditions and Their Meaning

A wedding is a beautiful occasion where two people in love come together. Weddings conducted around the world are different and diverse nevertheless a huge occasion and each event that is carried at a wedding has its own significance.

Things like carrying and throwing the bouquet, wedding veil are all traditions that have their own meaning as to why they are carried out.

Carrying a bouquet

Brides these days carry different flowers in their bouquet like roses or peonies but in the ancient days’ brides used to carry bouquet made of herbs that gave of a pungent smell mainly containing herbs like dill, garlic and others, this was mainly to ward off any evil spirits. It was believed that the distinct smell of these herbs helped hide the smell of the body odour and also to chase away any bad luck and ill health.

This tradition of carrying herbs has now modified into something beautiful. Nowadays brides don’t carry herbs they carry beautiful flowers in their bouquet. You can get your own bouquet at Hawthorn wedding flowers.

Tossing a bouquet

This is also an age-old tradition, where the bride would toss the bouquet over their shoulder to a group of single women and whoever catches the bouquet is believed to get married next. This event usually happens at the end of the wedding and it can get quite competitive too. This is mainly to wish luck for the single women to find a partner soon.

This tradition began in England where people believed that touching the bride on her wedding was good luck and many thoughts having an item from item was even better, therefore mainly single women would even follow the bride to get a piece of her dress, to prevent people from ripping the dress she would throw the bouquet and run.

Wedding veils

Wedding veils adds to a romantic touch to the wedding dress and adds a beautiful finish to the bride’s dress. The veil comes in different sizes and lengths and material, it can be shoulder length, elbow length, floor length, knee length, birdcage, blusher, walt, chapel and cathedral.

Wearing a veil is one of the oldest traditions, in the past people used to wrap the bride completely from top to bottom to denote purity, modesty and chastity and to ward off all the evil spirits who were thought to disrupt the happiness of the bride.

Some brides wear the veil over the face where as some others leave it draped over their hair and dress.

Wedding garter

Not all follow this tradition as it can be a bit cringey but some still do follow it. Wedding garter is a piece of clothing worn by the bride underneath the dress, during the reception the groom using his teeth or his hands should remove this piece of clothing and throw it into the crowd and whoever catches is believed to get married next. As before having a piece of clothing from the bride is thought to bring good luck to those who catch, it.