Some wedding lore makes me laugh...

While double-checking the symbolism of certain wedding flowers, I stumbled upon this very funny Old-World rhyme about the color of a wedding dress. Way long ago, white wedding dresses were a sign of being fabulously wealthy, and not every woman could get her hands on a white dress. At the Morris Museum, where I recently gave a lecture, their historical wedding gowns on display showed bright emerald green dresses from the 1800s, sapphire blue dresses...and even today's bride might choose a dress with a touch of color to it. Top-name designers are showing pink dresses, sage green dresses for organic weddings, lilac dresses, metallics and brights. With modern fashion trends in mind, how funny is it to see a poem like this one:

Married in white, you have chosen alright.
Married in green, ashamed to be seen.
Married in red, You will wish yourself dead.
Married in blue, you will always be true
Married in yellow, ashamed of your fellow.
Married in black, you will wish yourself back.
Married in pink, of you he'll think.

Of course, we know that cultural weddings often call for gorgeous red wedding dresses, and it would be a bit dramatic to think a bride is wishing herself dead!

It's quite funny to look back on the role that superstition and 'what's proper' played in weddings of olde, and aren't we lucky that we can choose a gown of color if we want to?

08/08/08 Weddings

Congratulations to the many brides and grooms who booked today, 08/08/08, as the lucky date for their weddings! Weddings have been focused on superstition for many ages, with brides and grooms over many centuries wanting good luck, abundance, fertility, and health for their partnerships and their partners. Most of the rituals we celebrate today have their roots in ancient good-luck superstitions -- the veil was supposed to shield the bride from evil spirits (and later, rival tribes, clans and families) who might steal her away from her happily ever after. The cake -- before its iced incarnation -- was once a pile of breads meant to symbolize abundance for the bride and groom. Somewhere along the line, someone said, "I think I'll frost it" and thus was born the wedding cake as we know it today. It may look different, but it holds the same magic for modern couples that the pile of wheat rolls held for their ancestors long ago. We all want luck, so it's no wonder that 08/08/08 was quickly snapped up as THE big wedding date -- and several national wedding contests take place today as well -- just like we saw in 07/07/07. I'm a fan of Perfect 10, as are many people, so what will 10/10/10 in two years be like for the wedding industry? Believe it or not, couples getting engaged this summer might just be looking at their 2010 calendars to book their big day -- with the new trend of Weekday Weddings at 1/3 the price of weekend weddings, it doesn't even *matter* if 10/10/10 doesn't fall on a weekend.