Weddings and betrothal: practices that mark them

Weddings are heavy with protection and blessing. Families the world over fear envy and the evil eye at the point where two households join, and many wedding customs are meant to guard the couple, bring fertility and bind the match. Examples include the Indian haldi and mangalsutra, the Jewish glass-breaking and canopy, the Moroccan henna night, the Chinese red dress and the European horseshoe and confetti. This page looks at what these customs are said to do.

Guarding the couple

Weddings gather people, food and attention, which makes them a target of envy in many belief systems. Brides in the Middle East and North Africa are surrounded by henna, amulets and kohl. In India the bride is marked with haldi and kajal, and a black dot may be placed against the evil eye. In Turkey, the couple may wear a blue bead, and Jewish tradition includes the covering of the bride's face. A new bride in some regions is protected by older women of the family, who stay close and watch for envious looks.

Binding and blessing

Vows, knots and rings carry the idea of binding. In Hindu weddings, the couple walks around the sacred fire and ties knots in their garments. In Scotland, handfasting once meant joining hands with a cord. Blessings call on ancestors and gods: Yoruba couples are blessed with kola nuts, and Christian weddings ask for God's blessing. Songs, dances and teasing rites also play a part, and many are as much a social event as a spiritual one, with neighbours, cooks and musicians all taking a role.

Fertility and omens

Many customs aim at fertility and prosperity: rice, nuts or grain thrown over the couple, bowls of sweet food, a child set on the bride's lap in several regions. Omens matter, with auspicious dates chosen by astrologers in India, and rain on a wedding day taken as lucky in some places and unlucky in others. Many of these customs are said to be older than the religions that now host them, and each faith has made its own rules about which are acceptable.

Pressure and change

Wedding customs can carry harm: dowry demands, child marriage and virginity tests have been justified by tradition and are illegal or condemned in many countries. In the diaspora, couples blend customs and may drop some. A commercial wedding industry now sells charms and rituals, some of them taken from cultures outside the couple's own. Some of the same customs have been questioned by reformers for the pressure they place on the bride and her family, and many couples now choose which to keep.