Wedding Superstitions and Their Meanings
Wedding superstitions have an opinion on nearly everything. They tell you what to wear, when to marry, who is allowed to see who and what the weather ought to be doing. Even the journey home can apparently go wrong if the wrong person, bird or funeral procession crosses your path.
Most wedding superstitions are supposed to do one of three things. They bring luck to the marriage, protect the couple from jealousy or harmful forces, or predict who will marry next. They don’t form one tidy set of rules. Rain can be a blessing in one tradition and a dreadful sign in another, while a colour welcomed by one community is carefully avoided elsewhere.
Many of the best-known beliefs come from British, Irish and European folklore, although protective wedding customs appear in cultures far beyond Europe. Their meanings have also changed. What began as protection against the evil eye can end up as a blue ribbon sewn into a modern wedding dress, long after anyone has remembered what it was meant to protect.
Why are there so many wedding superstitions?
A wedding marks a major change in a person’s life, and folklore tends to gather around moments when one stage ends and another begins. Older wedding customs were especially concerned with fertility, prosperity, family approval and the safe arrival of the bride at her new home. There was plenty that could supposedly go wrong, so people built up a rather exhausting collection of precautions.
Older accounts focus heavily on the bride because marriage once changed a woman’s legal, financial and social position far more dramatically than it changed a man’s. Many beliefs also assumed that the couple wanted children and that the bride was leaving her family to join her husband’s household. Those assumptions no longer fit every marriage, but the customs have outlived the social world that produced them.
Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue
The familiar rhyme is probably the most widely recognized piece of English-language wedding folklore. The full version usually ends with “and a sixpence in her shoe,” although the wording has never been completely fixed.
It isn’t ancient in any version we can reliably trace. Forms of the rhyme began appearing in English-language print during the early 1870s. British Vogue traces several early appearances, including an 1870 American story and an 1871 British magazine article. The second version mentions something new, borrowed and blue but leaves out the old item entirely. Apparently even Victorian brides had trouble finding everything on the list.
The meanings most often given today are reassuringly straightforward. Something old keeps a connection with the bride’s past, something new represents the life ahead, something borrowed passes on another person’s happiness, and something blue stands for loyalty or fidelity. The sixpence is meant to encourage prosperity.
Older explanations weren’t always so sentimental. An account published in the folklore journal Folklore in 1898 connected the borrowed and blue items with protection from the evil eye and fears surrounding fertility. In that version, the borrowed item was supposed to come from a woman who already had children. The rhyme was less a collection of keepsakes and more a small protective kit disguised as wedding accessories.
Is a white wedding dress supposed to be lucky?
White wedding dresses are traditional in many Western weddings, but wearing white isn’t really a luck superstition. Nor did Queen Victoria invent the white wedding dress, as the story is sometimes told. Brides had worn white before her, while plenty of others married in red, blue, pink, brown, black or whichever good dress they already owned.
Queen Victoria did help turn white into the fashionable ideal. When she married Prince Albert in 1840, she wore white satin with Honiton lace and orange blossom. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, newspaper reports, fashion plates and advertising spread the image of the white-clad bride throughout Victorian Britain. White also displayed the handmade lace clearly, allowing Victoria to support the British lace industry while looking suitably bridal.
The association with purity grew stronger as the fashion spread, but economics mattered too. A white dress was difficult to keep clean and often impractical for ordinary wear, which made it a visible sign that the wearer could afford a special garment. Many working women continued marrying in coloured dresses that could be worn again. The idea that every respectable bride had always worn white came later.
Why shouldn’t the couple see each other before the ceremony?
One of the most familiar wedding superstitions says it is bad luck for the couple to see each other before the ceremony, particularly for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress. The rule is now often kept for the surprise of seeing each other at the aisle rather than from any serious fear that the marriage will fail.
A commonly repeated explanation connects the custom with arranged marriages. If the couple hadn’t met, keeping the bride hidden supposedly reduced the chance of the groom backing out when he saw her. A Whanganui Regional Museum account of wedding traditions gives this explanation, although it is difficult to prove that every version of the superstition came from one particular practice.
Older weddings included many rules about when the bride could be seen, when she could put on her dress and whether she could look at herself in a mirror once fully dressed. These details differed by region. The general idea was that a bride approaching marriage occupied a vulnerable position, so too much attention at the wrong moment could attract envy, interference or plain bad luck.
The veil wasn’t always just decoration
Bridal veils have carried several meanings, including modesty, religious observance, status and the dramatic reveal at the ceremony. Folklore also gave them a protective job. Covering the bride could hide her from envious eyes or harmful spirits until the marriage was safely completed.
That concern wasn’t limited to the white veils associated with Western weddings. Protective jewellery and clothing have formed part of bridal dress in different communities. The Pitt Rivers Museum describes a gold Nubian bridal ornament from Sudan whose triangular form was connected with amulets worn for luck and protection from the evil eye.
This doesn’t mean every veil, headdress or piece of bridal jewellery shares the same origin. Wedding dress develops within particular religious and cultural traditions. What the examples have in common is the older belief that a bride receiving unusual amounts of attention, praise and envy might need some form of protection.
Does rain on your wedding day mean good luck?
Rain is one of the clearest examples of wedding folklore disagreeing with itself. You’ll often hear that a wet wedding day promises fertility, prosperity or a marriage that will be difficult to “untie.” Elsewhere, rain was treated as an unfortunate sign and sunshine was what the bride wanted.
Records in Ireland’s National Folklore Collection preserve several local versions of the belief. One account of Irish marriage customs from County Fermanagh lists the things a bride should wear and the days considered lucky for marriage. Other entries in the collection repeat the saying that the bride is fortunate when the sun shines on her, while rain is welcomed at a funeral instead.
These accounts record what people said in particular places; they don’t establish a universal Irish rule. Even neighbouring communities could preserve different versions. Rain was easy to turn into an omen because it could represent abundance and growth or a miserable beginning, depending on which interpretation the storyteller preferred.
Choosing the “right” day to marry
Modern couples often choose a wedding date according to work schedules, venue availability and whether their relatives can get there without changing planes three times. Older folklore expected the calendar to have an opinion too.
Wednesday was frequently described as the best day for a wedding in British and Irish rhymes, while Friday brought losses and Saturday brought no luck at all. That last warning has not done much damage to the modern Saturday wedding industry.
Months could be judged just as harshly. The Museum of Cambridge notes that May was once considered an unfavourable month in local English folklore, while March and September were preferred in one recorded Cambridgeshire community. The same source tells of a woman who blamed marrying on a Friday for her later divorce. Once a superstition has a bad result to point at, it rarely asks to see the rest of the evidence.
A chimney sweep could improve your chances
Not every wedding omen was something to avoid. In parts of Britain, seeing a chimney sweep on the way to or from the ceremony was considered extremely lucky. A kiss from the sweep was thought to be even better.
The belief became popular enough for some sightings to be arranged in advance. The Museum of Cambridge records that sweeps were paid to appear at weddings or rewarded with a generous amount of beer. Nothing strengthens a chance encounter quite like making an appointment for it.
Horseshoes also became familiar bridal charms. Brides carried small decorated versions, while horseshoe images appeared on wedding cards and keepsakes. As with horseshoes displayed around the home, people disagreed about which way the ends should point. Upright could hold the luck inside, while downward-facing ends allowed the luck to pour over the couple. Conveniently, either direction could be explained as fortunate.
Why do guests throw rice at newlyweds?
Throwing rice, grain, nuts or fruit over a newly married couple has been associated with fertility and abundance. Food represented the hope that the household would never go without and, in older interpretations, that the couple would have children.
Other explanations gave the flying food a protective role. It could distract or satisfy troublesome spirits before they interfered with the marriage. The Whanganui Regional Museum account describes wedding bells, veils, flowers and thrown food as different ways of protecting a couple from hostile forces.
Shoes were thrown too, although not usually the delicate ones being worn by the bride. In British and Irish customs, an old shoe could be tossed after the couple or tied to their carriage as a sign of luck. Tying it on was considerably safer and eventually helped inspire the clattering cans attached to wedding cars. Guests still got to make a terrible noise, but the couple had a better chance of leaving without being struck by footwear.
Catching the bouquet and being “next”
The person who catches the bridal bouquet is supposedly the next to marry. It is a prediction rather than a protective charm, and one that has caused generations of unmarried guests either to crowd forward or suddenly become very interested in something at the other side of the room.
The bouquet toss isn’t the only wedding custom that chooses who will marry next. A Finnish tradition recorded by the Smithsonian American Art Museum involved a bride wearing a wedding crown decorated with lupin, a plant associated with fertility and abundance. After the ceremony, the blindfolded bride placed the crown on one of the unmarried women dancing around her. The chosen woman was expected to be the next bride.
The two customs aren’t identical and don’t necessarily share one origin. They do show how often wedding celebrations turn the married couple’s luck outward, using the bride’s flowers, clothing or crown to identify the next person who will supposedly follow her.
Wedding colours depend on where you are
White dominates the popular image of a Western wedding, but it isn’t the universal colour of marriage or good fortune. In Chinese culture, red has long been considered auspicious and is associated with celebration, happiness and high status. The National Gallery of Victoria notes its continuing connection with weddings, births and New Year celebrations.
Colour beliefs can even contradict one another within the same country. Irish folklore collections contain warnings against brides wearing green, yet green is now freely used at Irish and Irish-themed weddings. Black has been avoided in some places because of its association with mourning, while elsewhere a good black dress was practical, respectable and entirely suitable for marriage.
That is why statements such as “this wedding colour always means bad luck” need some context. The meaning depends on the period, the place, the religious tradition and sometimes the opinion of one particularly insistent relative.
American wedding luck has some very local rules
American wedding folklore is not one neat tradition. It includes beliefs carried across the Atlantic, customs preserved within particular communities and practices that developed in specific regions of the United States.
One of the more distinctive Southern superstitions involves burying an unopened bottle of bourbon near the wedding venue. The bottle should be placed upside down exactly one month before the ceremony to prevent rain. After the wedding, it is dug up and shared.
Southern Living reports that the origin is uncertain, although the instructions have become impressively specific. It must be bourbon, the bottle must remain unopened and apparently the weather is particular about deadlines.
Rain itself has more than one meaning in American folklore. It may be the disaster the buried bourbon is supposed to prevent, or it may be reinterpreted as a promise of a good marriage. One North Carolina account recorded by the USC Digital Folklore Archives describes rain on the wedding day as a fortunate sign.
That contradiction is not unusual. Weather folklore often finds good and bad meanings for the same event. If the sky refuses to cooperate with the seating plan, someone can usually produce a superstition that makes it sound intentional.
Germany prefers a little controlled destruction
In Germany, the Polterabend is a gathering held before the wedding at which guests smash old porcelain or ceramic dishes. The noise was traditionally believed to drive away evil spirits, while the broken pieces were associated with good luck.
A German account of the Polterabend custom explains that the couple sweep up the pieces together. This has come to represent their ability to face future difficulties as a team. It is one of the few wedding customs where a heap of broken crockery means everything is proceeding exactly as planned.
Not everything should be smashed. Glass and mirrors are traditionally excluded because breaking them carries its own unlucky associations. Even ceremonial chaos has rules.
Italian folklore keeps an eye on mirrors and metal
Italian wedding customs differ considerably between regions. In some areas, the bride is warned against looking at herself in the mirror once she is fully dressed. She may avoid the bad luck by leaving off a glove, shoe or another part of the outfit.
Italy Magazine’s collection of regional traditions also records beliefs concerning gold jewellery, the garter and where the bride spends the night before the ceremony. These are not rules followed by every Italian couple, but examples of the local beliefs that accumulated around weddings.
Another account describes the groom carrying a small piece of iron to ward off evil spirits and encourage a happy future. The bride might tear her veil slightly for luck. The same source records a broken glass or vase whose number of pieces was said to predict the couple’s happy years together. Presumably nobody was expected to count the fragments with absolute accuracy after the reception.
Protection could be worn as part of the wedding clothes
Protective wedding objects are not confined to the European veil or the blue item in the English rhyme. Clothing and jewellery have carried protective meanings in many communities.
Traditional Greek bridal costumes used crosses, coloured stones and two-headed eagles as protective symbols. Other embroidered images, including pomegranates, birds and boats, expressed wishes for fertility and abundance. The clothes were doing several jobs at once. They displayed wealth and regional identity while surrounding the bride with favourable signs.
The Pitt Rivers Museum holds a gold forehead ornament from Nubia in Sudan that was presented to a woman at marriage. Its triangular form developed from amulets worn for good luck and protection against the evil eye.
These objects were not merely decorative extras. They placed protection directly on the body at the moment when the wearer was entering a new stage of life.
A lucky wedding may begin with the calendar
Choosing the correct day is another widespread concern, although the lucky date changes with the calendar being consulted.
In Japan, the traditional rokuyō cycle assigns different fortunes to six repeating days. It appears on many Japanese calendars and may still be considered when arranging major events such as weddings and funerals.
Nippon.com’s guide to the rokuyō cycle describes Taian, meaning “great peace,” as an especially auspicious day for weddings. Butsumetsu is generally regarded as inauspicious. The system reached Japan from China around the fourteenth century but did not become widespread until much later.
Not every Japanese couple plans around these days, just as not every American couple buries bourbon and not every German couple sacrifices the crockery. A superstition can remain culturally familiar without being universally followed.
Who will be the next to marry?
Wedding folklore has a particular fascination with identifying the next bride. The bouquet toss is now familiar in many countries. The unmarried guest who catches the bouquet is said to be next in line for marriage, assuming she wants the position and has not sensibly stepped out of the way.
A Finnish custom used a wedding crown instead. The Smithsonian American Art Museum describes the custom through its Lupin Wedding Crown. After the ceremony, the blindfolded bride placed her crown on one of the unmarried women dancing around her. The recipient was expected to be the next to marry.
The crown and bouquet perform the same basic trick. An ordinary wedding object becomes a way of briefly turning the future into a game.
Not every wedding ritual is a superstition
Lists of wedding superstitions sometimes include every unusual or symbolic ceremony they can find. That can flatten important cultural distinctions.
Jumping the broom, for example, appears in many African American weddings. It is sometimes described as a luck ritual, but its history is more complicated. The United States National Park Service connects its modern use with the history of slavery and the desire to honour enslaved ancestors, while also noting that scholars dispute the custom’s precise origin and historical frequency.
For contemporary couples, jumping the broom may mark the creation of a household, recognise family history or honour African American heritage. Calling it merely a superstition misses most of what the ceremony is actually doing.
What happens if you break a wedding superstition?
In folklore, breaking the rule could predict quarrels, poverty, infertility, separation or general misfortune. In real life, seeing each other before the ceremony, marrying on a Saturday or forgetting something blue has no demonstrated power over a marriage.
Wedding superstitions survive because rituals are good at absorbing nerves. A wedding is expensive, public and emotionally loaded, so carrying a lucky object or following a family custom can make the day feel more familiar. It also gives relatives a part to play. Someone lends the old earrings, finds the sixpence, watches the weather and makes sure the horseshoe is facing whichever way the family has decided is correct.
That doesn’t make every tradition empty. An heirloom can connect several generations, a borrowed object can honour a happy marriage, and a protective charm can keep a cultural story alive. The superstition isn’t proof that the marriage will succeed, but it can still tell you a great deal about what people once feared, hoped for and tried to control.
And if it rains, there is almost certainly a version of the folklore that says you’re lucky. You may just have to ignore the version from the next county.
Explore more beliefs, signs and traditional meanings in Superstitions and Omens.
If you’re planning a wedding, folklore can find something to worry about in almost every part of it. There are lucky colours, unlucky days, rules about who should see who, things the bride is supposed to carry and signs to watch for on the way to the ceremony. Even the weather has several different meanings depending on which tradition you happen to ask.
Most wedding superstitions are supposed to do one of a few things. They bring luck to the marriage, protect the couple from envy or harmful forces, encourage prosperity and children, or predict who will marry next. The details can change quite a bit depending on where the superstition comes from. Rain can be lucky in one place and unwelcome in another, while a colour avoided by one community can be the obvious choice for a wedding somewhere else.
Many of the superstitions familiar in Britain, Ireland and North America came out of European traditions, but wedding beliefs reach much further than that. You’ll find protective clothing, repeating numbers, lucky dates, fertility symbols and ways of guarding against the evil eye in wedding customs across the world. Some are still taken seriously; others survive because someone in the family insists that you really ought to do it, just in case.
Why do weddings attract so many superstitions?
A wedding has always been a big change, and big changes tend to attract folklore. Historically, marriage could affect where you lived, which family you belonged to, your money, your social position and whether you were expected to have children. There was plenty riding on the day, so it isn’t surprising that people looked for ways to give the marriage as much luck as possible.
Older customs focus particularly heavily on the bride. That reflects a time when marriage usually changed a woman’s legal, financial and social position far more dramatically than a man’s. Many traditions also assumed she would leave her own family, join her husband’s household and have children. Those assumptions clearly don’t describe every marriage now, but the superstitions built around them have lasted surprisingly well.
Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue
You probably know this one even if you’ve never been particularly interested in wedding superstitions. A bride should have “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue,” with the longer version adding “and a sixpence in her shoe.”
The rhyme isn’t ancient, despite how often it’s presented that way. Versions began appearing in English-language print during the early 1870s. British Vogue traces several early appearances, including an American story from 1870 and a British magazine article from 1871. The wording varied, and some early versions didn’t even include all four of the things now considered essential.
The meanings you’ll usually hear today are fairly straightforward. Something old keeps a connection with the bride’s past, something new represents the life ahead, something borrowed passes on another person’s good fortune, and something blue represents loyalty or fidelity. The sixpence is there for prosperity.
Older interpretations could be much more superstitious. An account published in the folklore journal Folklore in 1898 connected the borrowed and blue items with protection against the evil eye and with fertility. In that version, the borrowed object was meant to come from a woman who already had children. So the items weren’t originally just sentimental keepsakes; at least some people understood them as ways of bringing luck and protection into the marriage.
Is a white wedding dress supposed to be lucky?
Not really. White has become so closely tied to Western weddings that it can look like an ancient bridal rule, but brides have worn all kinds of colours. Queen Victoria didn’t invent the white wedding dress either, although her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 helped make it enormously fashionable.
Victoria wore white satin with Honiton lace and orange blossom. The Victoria and Albert Museum explains how images and reports of the wedding helped popularise the white bridal dress throughout Victorian Britain. The colour also showed off the handmade lace particularly well, something Victoria deliberately used to support the British lace industry.
The connection between white and purity became stronger later, but money mattered too. A white dress was difficult to keep clean and wasn’t especially practical if you needed to wear it again. Many women simply married in their best existing dress, whatever colour it happened to be.
Wedding colours can mean very different things
If you move beyond the Western white wedding dress, the idea of one universally lucky bridal colour falls apart very quickly. Red, for example, has long been an auspicious colour in Chinese culture and is strongly associated with celebration, happiness and good fortune. The National Gallery of Victoria notes its connection with weddings, births and New Year celebrations.
Green has had a more complicated reputation. Some Irish folklore warns brides against wearing it, yet green is now used freely at Irish and Irish-inspired weddings. Black has been avoided in some traditions because of its connection with mourning, while elsewhere a respectable black dress was perfectly practical bridal clothing.
So if you come across a list telling you that one wedding colour is always lucky and another always means disaster, it’s worth asking where and when that rule supposedly applies. Wedding colour meanings are cultural, regional and historical, not universal.
Why shouldn’t the couple see each other before the ceremony?
This is still one of the best-known wedding rules. The groom isn’t supposed to see the bride before the ceremony, particularly once she’s wearing her wedding dress. These days, couples who follow it are often more interested in preserving the surprise of seeing each other at the aisle than preventing some terrible piece of bad luck.
One explanation you’ll often hear connects the custom with arranged marriages. If a couple hadn’t met beforehand, keeping the bride out of sight supposedly reduced the chance of the groom seeing her and refusing to go through with the marriage. A Whanganui Regional Museum account of wedding traditions gives this explanation, although there’s no good reason to assume every version of the superstition began in exactly the same way.
Older wedding folklore contains plenty of other rules about when a bride could be seen, when she should put on her dress and whether she should look at herself once she was fully dressed. The details change from place to place, but the bride is often treated as being unusually vulnerable just before the marriage is completed.
Veils and wedding clothes could be protective too
A bridal veil hasn’t always been there purely for appearance. Veils have been connected with modesty, religion and status, but folklore also gave them a protective role. Covering the bride could supposedly shield her from envy, the evil eye or other harmful forces until the wedding was safely completed.
The idea of wearing protection at a wedding appears far beyond the familiar Western veil. Traditional bridal dress in different parts of Greece has included crosses, coloured stones and other protective symbols alongside designs associated with fertility and abundance. Wedding clothes could show wealth and regional identity while also surrounding the bride with signs believed to bring her good fortune.
The Pitt Rivers Museum also holds a gold forehead ornament from Nubia in Sudan that was given to a woman at marriage. Its triangular form developed from amulets associated with good luck and protection against the evil eye.
That doesn’t mean all bridal veils, jewellery and headdresses share one origin. They don’t. What these examples show is how often marriage and protection have been connected, especially when the bride is suddenly the focus of everyone’s attention.
Does rain on your wedding day mean good luck?
It depends which version of the folklore you hear. Rain has been interpreted as a sign of fertility, prosperity and a marriage that will be difficult to “untie.” It has also been treated as exactly what most couples standing outside in formal clothes think it is, and that is bad news.
Ireland’s National Folklore Collection preserves plenty of local wedding beliefs, and they don’t always agree with one another. One County Fermanagh account records marriage customs and lucky wedding days, while other entries favour sunshine for the bride and rain for a funeral.
Across the Atlantic, you can find the opposite interpretation. A North Carolina belief recorded by the USC Digital Folklore Archives treats wedding-day rain as lucky. Neither version is a universal rule. Rain is simply very easy to turn into an omen. It can represent growth and abundance if you want a positive reading, or a miserable beginning if the story requires a bad one.
And then there’s the Southern bourbon bottle
One of the more distinctive wedding weather superstitions in the American South involves burying an unopened bottle of bourbon upside down near the wedding venue. The usual modern instructions say it should be buried exactly one month before the ceremony to keep the rain away, then dug up and shared after the wedding.
Southern Living notes that the origin of the custom is uncertain, which is worth mentioning because the very precise rules are often repeated as though they have been handed down unchanged for centuries. Whatever its age, the superstition is now well established enough that plenty of Southern couples still do it.
Is there a lucky day to get married?
According to wedding folklore, absolutely. The problem is choosing which calendar you want to believe.
British and Irish wedding rhymes often favour Wednesday and are much less enthusiastic about Friday and Saturday. One familiar version promises “Wednesday the best day of all,” while Friday brings losses and Saturday no luck at all. Saturday has since become one of the most popular days to marry, so this particular warning clearly lost the argument.
Months attracted rules too. The Museum of Cambridge records local beliefs about lucky and unlucky wedding dates, including warnings against marrying in May and preferences for March or September. It also records a woman who later blamed her divorce on the fact that she had married on a Friday.
Japan has a completely different way of judging the date. The traditional rokuyō cycle divides days into six repeating categories of fortune and is still printed on many Japanese calendars. Nippon.com explains that Taian, or “great peace,” is considered particularly auspicious for weddings, while Butsumetsu is generally regarded as unlucky.
Not every Japanese couple chooses a date according to rokuyō, just as most British couples no longer panic about a Saturday wedding. A superstition can remain culturally familiar long after people stop arranging their lives around it.
A chimney sweep could improve your wedding luck
Not every wedding sign was something to avoid. In parts of Britain, seeing a chimney sweep on the way to or from the wedding was considered particularly lucky. Getting a kiss from the sweep was supposed to be even better.
The tradition became popular enough that the “chance” encounter didn’t always happen by chance. The Museum of Cambridge records that sweeps could be paid to appear at weddings or rewarded with beer for turning up. If luck wasn’t passing the church at the right time, apparently you could book it.
Horseshoes became another familiar wedding charm. Brides carried small decorated versions and horseshoe designs appeared on cards, cakes and keepsakes. As with the wider horseshoe superstition, people disagree about which way the ends should face. Pointing upwards is said to hold the luck inside, while pointing downwards lets the luck fall over the couple. Both explanations have managed to survive.
Why do people throw rice and confetti at weddings?
Throwing something over a newly married couple is much older than the paper confetti you see at weddings today. Rice, grain, nuts and fruit have all been used, usually with the hope of bringing fertility, abundance and prosperity to the new household.
Some explanations gave the shower of food another job as well. It could distract or satisfy troublesome spirits before they had a chance to interfere with the marriage. The Whanganui Regional Museum describes several wedding customs in terms of increasing luck and keeping harmful forces away from the couple.
Confetti eventually gave people another way to shower the couple without throwing handfuls of food. By the twentieth century it was firmly part of wedding celebrations. A 1938 photograph in the Library of Congress even describes a bride and groom being showered with confetti “for good luck,” showing that the link with wedding luck hadn’t disappeared when paper replaced grain.
There is one confusing detail in the name. In Italian, confetti traditionally means sugared almonds rather than the little pieces of paper thrown outside a wedding. The paper version developed from the same idea of scattering small celebratory objects, but Italian wedding confetti and the confetti being thrown outside a British church aren’t quite the same thing.
Old shoes were thrown after newlyweds in British and Irish customs too, or tied to the carriage as lucky objects. Tying them on was presumably preferable if you were the person trying to leave the wedding. The later habit of attaching noisy cans to a wedding car fits comfortably into the same tradition of sending the couple off with plenty of commotion.
Who will be the next to marry?
Wedding folklore has always been unusually interested in the unmarried people standing nearby. The best-known version today is the bouquet toss. Whoever catches the bride’s bouquet is supposed to be the next person to marry.
The bouquet isn’t the only wedding object that has been asked to predict this. A Finnish tradition recorded by the Smithsonian American Art Museum used a bridal crown instead. After the ceremony, the blindfolded bride placed her crown on one of the unmarried women dancing around her, and the woman who received it was expected to be the next bride.
The two customs don’t necessarily share an origin, but the idea behind them is very similar. Something belonging to the bride passes to an unmarried guest and briefly turns the question of who will marry next into part of the celebration.
Germany prefers broken crockery
In Germany, the Polterabend traditionally involves friends and family gathering before the wedding and smashing porcelain or ceramic dishes. The noise was believed to frighten away harmful spirits, while the broken pieces themselves became associated with good luck.
A German account of the Polterabend tradition explains that the couple then clean up the pieces together, something now understood as a sign that they’ll deal with future difficulties as a team.
You don’t smash everything, though. Glass and mirrors are traditionally avoided. Considering the separate superstition about the bad luck caused by breaking a mirror, that part is probably just as well.
Italian weddings have their own rules about mirrors and metal
Italian wedding superstitions vary considerably between regions, so there isn’t one checklist every Italian bride and groom is expected to follow. Some traditions warn the bride against looking at herself in the mirror once she is completely dressed. Leaving off a shoe, glove or another part of the outfit can supposedly get around the rule.
Italy Magazine records a number of regional wedding beliefs involving mirrors, jewellery, garters and where the bride spends the night before the ceremony. Another tradition has the groom carry a small piece of iron to keep evil spirits away.
Breaking something can be lucky here too, provided it’s the right thing. One Italian custom involves breaking a glass or vase and using the number of pieces to predict how many happy years the couple will have together. This is folklore rather than a rule followed at every Italian wedding, but it’s a good example of how detailed these local traditions can become.
Not every wedding tradition is a superstition
There’s a temptation to put every unusual wedding custom onto a list of superstitions, but that can strip away what the tradition actually means to the people practising it.
Jumping the broom is a good example. The practice appears in many African American weddings today, but describing it as nothing more than a lucky ritual misses its history. The United States National Park Service discusses its connection with African American history and slavery, while also noting that historians have debated exactly where the custom originated and how widespread it was in the past.
For couples who include it now, jumping the broom can recognise family history, honour enslaved ancestors or mark the creation of a new household. That gives it a very different weight from carrying a lucky horseshoe or worrying about rain.
What happens if you break a wedding superstition?
If you followed every old warning literally, getting a wedding wrong could apparently leave you facing quarrels, poverty, infertility, separation or years of bad luck. Fortunately, there’s no evidence that seeing each other before the ceremony, getting married on a Saturday or forgetting something blue has any power over what happens to your marriage.
What these superstitions can do is give people something familiar to hold onto on a day when emotions are running high. Your grandmother lends you her earrings, someone finds an old sixpence, another relative watches the weather and somebody checks that the horseshoe is facing whichever direction your family has decided is lucky.
Some of those little rituals end up meaning more because of the people attached to them. An old piece of jewellery can connect several generations, a borrowed item can honour someone whose marriage you admire, and a protective charm can keep part of a family or cultural tradition going. None of it can guarantee a happy marriage, but it tells you plenty about what people have hoped for, worried about and tried to protect on a wedding day.
And if it rains, you can probably find a superstition that says you’re lucky. You may just have to ignore the one from the next county.
Explore more beliefs, signs and traditional meanings in Superstitions and Omens.