Wedding Traditions from Around the World – Dance Studios in Orange County

Wedding traditions vary all over the world. Here is a peek at a few wedding traditions from other cultures!

Mexico – The Lazo is a cord, often decorated and symbolically joins the bride and groom. Placed around their necks in a figure 8 after the vows are made, it represents how their lives are now interconnected.

Sweden – Swedish brides aren’t walked down the aisle and given away by their father. It’s considered too patriarchal of a gesture that suggests the bride is property and not equal to the groom. Typically, the bride and groom walk down the aisle together.

Japan – San San Kudo is the sake sharing ceremony. The bride, groom, and their parents share sips of sake out of three cups. This ceremony symbolically binds the two families, now united together.

Argentina – Argentinian weddings mean instead of the bouquet toss, ribbons will determine the next to marry. Single women will pull ribbons out of the wedding cake. Whoever pulls the ribbon with a ring attached will be the next to marry.

Germany – In the weeks before the wedding, guests gather outside the home of the bride (or the home of the couple if they already live together) and break porcelain outside the home. Called Polterabend, (from the verb Polten- to make a lot of noise, and Aben – evening) it is supposed to bring good luck to the couple. The act of the couple working together to clean up the mess is to teach them that working together they can overcome challenges.

China – Before the ceremony, a groom will head over to the bride’s house, where he is met by her friends, who give him tasks to perform and wait for payment before the bride is surrendered over to him. It’s meant to be a lighthearted affair meant so the groom demonstrates his love and commitment to the bride.

Bonus: Not a wedding tradition, but wife carrying is a fun activity that originated in Finland. There are several ideas of how the sport was started. One is that Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen was a robber and, with his gang of thieves, would steal women from villages, carrying them on their backs. Similarly, a second idea is that young men would steal other men’s wives for themselves. The third is that Rosvo-Ronkainen trained his gang to be faster by carrying heavy sacks, and it evolved into carrying a woman to train.

Now, there are championships all over the world, consisting of a race with both water and dry obstacles. The Wife Carrying World Championships are held in Sonkajarvi, Finland. Apparently, the prize is the wife’s weight in beer.