Weird Weddings
Getting married is a strange custom in itself but then some people take the ceremony to even greater extremes! While we have expensive weddings, diamond engagement engagement rings, and expensive gifts, other cultures have things that set them apart.
In Scotland they "Blacken the Bride" as part of the hen night and bachelorette rituals. Nevertheless, the bride to be is pelted with foul detritus from the refrigerator usually eggs, rotten tomatoes and the like and is then paraded around town, usually taking in a few bars along the way.
The Germans have a reputation for being efficient and humorless, and perhaps the tradition of bride and groom sawing a log really underlines the stereotype. It is a custom for a log, as in tree log, to be placed on a saw horse and man and wife to engage in a 2-man saw competition with themselves. The idea is that they are going to have to work together and the act of sawing the log together signifies this.
Back to the Germans, another strange custom involves the guests - they smash all the items of crockery in the place! The bride and groom then have to sweep the entire mess up!!The point is that the spouses will be working together from now on and this reinforces the bond - they will be cleaning up each other's mess from now on.
One last German custom is to kidnap the bride and hide her, usually in a bar, the groom and his cronies then have to go find her and of course, have a drink along the way.This practice has been known t end badly.
Moving to India, weddings there are usually held over several days and the idea is to make the bride feel like a princess. One wacky custom is to steal the groom's shoes - when he enters the venue with the altar, he must remove his shoes but the bride's family is under a duty to steal his shoes while his family is supposed to protect them.If the bride's family can steal the shoes the groom must pay whatever price they ask in order to get them back!
In Sweden, the custom is to kiss the bride - a normal-sounding concept unless you consider the circumstances. If the bride goes to the restroom, the guests can steal a kiss from her by lining up outside the restroom doors and when she emerges she has to give the line-up a kiss each!
The French have a custom known as “Chiverie”; during the evening the guests try to startle and surprise the couple by banging pots and pans together and generally making loud noises, often using brass band instruments.The bride and groom have to emerge from their love nest to wait on their guests. It's amazing they manage to breed at all.