The fascinating history behind 15 wedding traditions

Social media is filled with viral videos of creative and unique wedding ideas, starting with outrageous wedding proposals. And when it comes to asking someone to marry you, all the old wedding traditions are gone, right? After all, 70 per cent of modern couples say it’s not the man’s job to propose marriage, and more than 90 per cent say a proposal should be discussed first, according to a 2021 survey of 1200 couples done by wedding-planning site Zola.

Well, it turns out we haven’t ditched all those time-honoured wedding traditions. In fact, even though both men and women think it’s fine for either person to propose, 75 per cent of women said they wouldn’t do it. From the knee you propose on to how you do the wedding garter belt toss, much of the current wedding etiquette still comes from ancient tradition. We found the sources of these popular traditions and more, including why it’s called the ring finger and the deal with the “something borrowed, something blue” rhyme.

Read on to learn the surprising, funny, and even scary stories behind your favourite wedding traditions.

White is by far the most popular colour for wedding dresses in the Western world, but that’s a fairly recent tradition. During the royal wedding of Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840, Victoria wore a light-coloured satin gown. So many brides wanted to look like royalty that they mimicked her dress, including the hue, said to symbolise purity and virginity in Victorian culture.

Fun fact: Although her dress looks white in illustrations from the time, it was actually champagne. Eventually, white became the exclusive colour for the bride, and to this day, etiquette dictates that all other guests avoid wearing the shade at a wedding.

In many Eastern countries, including China, red symbolises wealth and good fortune, making it the perfect colour for brides. The earliest mention of a red-toned wedding dress comes from the Chinese myth of Panhu, a dog-dragon god who became human to marry a princess. As part of the wedding, he made his bride an opulent and brightly coloured “phoenix dress.”

Centuries later, many Chinese brides still choose to wear sleek red phoenix dresses. That said, many Eastern brides will have a pre-wedding photo shoot for which they’ll wear a white, Western-style gown. Other cultures have different wedding dress colours, covering the whole rainbow.

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Queen Victoria chose a long, pale, gauzy veil to go with her iconic wedding dress. It was part of women’s fashion at the time, but her pairing made it into one of the Western wedding traditions we still celebrate today. But Victoria wasn’t the first bride to don a veil.

Many cultures and religions – including Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hindu – have used some type of veil during wedding ceremonies for millennia. Ancient Roman brides wore bright yellow veils, said to look like a flame and symbolising light and warmth. Muslims often veil a bride’s face as a way to show modesty and protect her from evil.

Jewish brides are veiled as a nod to the story of Jacob being tricked into marrying Leah rather than his intended, Rachel – lifting the veil allows the groom to make sure he’s marrying the right person.

You can thank the Egyptians for starting the wedding tradition of giving a beloved a ring. The circle of the ring represents eternity, as it has no beginning or end, and the empty space in the centre symbolises a gateway into the unknown. When Alexander the Great conquered the Egyptians, the Greeks adopted this tradition, making their own “love” rings inscribed with Eros and Cupid. The Romans carried on the ring tradition and established gold as the appropriate metal, often adding intricate carvings or gemstones.

From there, wedding rings broadened to include a variety of metals and stones, and the worth depended on the wealth and status of the couple. For a long time, it was just women who wore the ring. It didn’t become common for men to wear a formal wedding ring until around World War I.

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Though the history of wedding rings stretches back to ancient times, the history of engagement rings is somewhat shorter. The practice of having two separate rings – one for the betrothal and the other for the wedding – began in the 12th century.

The Catholic church decreed that a wedding should be a holy ceremony and that a ring for the woman should be part of it. At that point, people started giving one ring as a promise and saving the “real” ring for the ceremony. Now, modern etiquette rules suggest a man should have a ring in his possession if he’s proposing.

Diamonds didn’t become associated with weddings until 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond engagement ring to Mary of Burgundy, the most popular bachelorette of her time. He had it made with small diamonds spelling out her first initial. Diamonds were solidified as the ultimate engagement and wedding ring stone in the 1940s, thanks to a slick marketing campaign by the diamond company De Beers.

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No one is quite sure where the tradition of a man getting down on one knee to propose started. Some say it hearkens back to medieval times, when knights knelt before ladies. Others guess that because it was a sign of surrender during feudal wars that men did it as a symbol of surrendering their will and fortune to their beloved (and to show her family they weren’t a threat). Or it may stem from the Persian tradition of prostrating oneself on the ground to show respect.

But while the roots go back for centuries, kneeling to propose is more of a pop-culture thing, only becoming the standard for Westerners starting in the 1960s.

Most married people today wear their wedding ring on the fourth finger of their left hand, called the “ring finger” for this very reason. You can credit this to the ancient Egyptians as well. They believed the “vena amoris” or “vein of love” ran through the ring finger, directly to the heart. That isn’t anatomically accurate, but it does give beautiful meaning to wearing your ring on that finger.

The Romans adopted this tradition, along with the giving of rings, to show love and commitment. As most people are right-handed, the practice of wearing a wedding ring on the nondominant hand emerged to protect the ring from wear and tear.

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Getting married used to be a much looser affair. In most cultures, it simply required the consent of both parties, usually in the presence of witnesses. In the Middle Ages, English couples showed their consent by accepting an object given to them by their beloved. This object was called a “wed” and was often a ring. The ceremony of joining two people in marriage then got the name “wedding,” a word we still use today.

The Catholic church signed the sacrament of marriage into religious law in the 16th century, and to this day, many people opt to get married in a church (Catholic or otherwise).

The phrase “tying the knot” is often used in place of “getting married,” but why? It stems from an ancient Celtic wedding tradition in which the couple’s hands were ceremonially tied together to show unity. A knot was made for each vow, and the couple was given the final knotted rope as a keepsake and reminder of their vows.

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