It’s your wedding day. If your mother-in-law smashes a piece of cake on your head, don’t panic. She might just have been reviewing some old Irish wedding customs.Funny old weddings
Friends for life: in Irish tradition it was believed that if the bride’s mother-in-law broke a piece of wedding cake on the bride’s head as she entering the house after the ceremony, they would be friends for life.
Lucky
- hearing a cuckoo on the wedding morning or seeing three magpies,
- marrying during a ‘growing moon and a flowing tide’,
- those married in harvest will spend all their lives gathering,
- when leaving the church, someone must throw an old shoe over the bride’s head. It might not be very nice but she will have great luck after this.
- the couple should be walking together to the church. On the way, people would be throwing at them not just rice but pots and pans! That was meant to bless their marriage.
- Wearing a blue dress. That was the colour of purity in ancient times.
- Marrying on St. Patrick’s Day. That was considered the luckiest day of the year.
Unlucky
- marrying on a Saturday,
- if a glass or cup were broken on the wedding day,
- bride and groom should never wash their hands in the same sink at the same time,
- in Britain, a green wedding dress was thought to be unlucky unless the bride was Irish.
Save the euros, the pots over your head and your in-laws attacking you with wedding cakes. If you don’t want to go through all this hassle you better move to Russia. There, a couple living together for two years is automatically considered married. This is called a citizen marriage.
(Picture by TWO photographers)
