Ethnic Wedding Traditions
Every culture has its own wedding traditions. While most American brides are familiar with our own customs, the wedding traditions of other lands and peoples can also be quite beautiful. You may want to consider including some of these interesting customs in your own wedding.
Southwest Native Americans use a wedding vase during the wedding. Traditionally, the groom’s parents make the vase. The vase has two spouts. During the wedding the bride drinks from one side and the groom drinks from the other spout. This represents both the individuality of the couple and their unity. The couple protects the vase throughout their lifetime. When one of them dies, the one remaining finds another couple that has a happy marriage and honors them with the gift of the wedding vase.
Celery is an important part of the Amish wedding meal. It’s included in many of the foods. The Amish couple keeps their wedding a secret until a few weeks before the wedding to everyone but the parents, who need to grow extra celery. Rumors abound when an additional garden of celery grows at an Amish household!
While you might not like celery that well, another Amish custom is quite interesting. The day of the wedding feast, the bride and groom make seating arrangements so that every unmarried girl or boy over the age of 16 sits next to a specially matched and equally single person of the opposite sex. This is appropriate if you have many singles coming to your reception.
One interesting and lovely tradition comes from Argentina. Traditional weddings in Argentina don’t have a best man or bridal attendants. Instead, like American weddings the father of the bride accompanies her down the aisle but remains at her side. The groom’s mother escorts him and she too stays by his side during the ceremony. Other cultures often have both parents remain at the side of their children during the ceremony, to represent not only a uniting of the couple, but also the families.