Weddings are replete with superstition, from brides wearing something old, new, borrowed and blue to not seeing your betrothed before the ceremony. Many are centuries old and have become time-honoured customs, but there are plenty of marriage traditions from the past that you might be less familiar with – or surprised to find they still continue.
Blackening the bride and groom
The colour white has long been associated with weddings, but in the north and north-east of rural Scotland – from Montrose to Fraserbrough, to the Orkney and Shetland Islands – the bride and groom could expect to be ‘blackened’ in the lead-up to their nuptials.
Ironically, the custom was originally about cleanliness. Known as feet washing in the 1600s, it was associated with purity and offered protection against problems in the marriage bed, according to Dr Sheila Young, author of Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland: Blackening the Bride and Decorating the Hen.
But by the early 19th century it had taken on a game-like quality, with feet being purposely blackened with soot from the chimney, which was believed to have magical powers. The feet and legs would be scrubbed and the wedding ring thrown in the dirty water for the unmarried women to find – a twist on throwing the bouquet.
Towards the end of the century, when bank holidays and leisure time in the warmer months became more common, blackening moved outside and became much messier. The couple, says Dr Young, could expect to be smeared in everything from cocoa powder, molasses and manure to fish guts, flour and eggs.
What might sound like an unpleasant experience to some is actually welcomed by those who practise it and the tradition is still going strong today.
“Believe it or not, it's all about love and belonging,” says Dr Young. “It’s about walking in the footsteps of their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents, who’ve all done it before them. Blackening is about kinship and locality and tradition. It also became about luck as it’s good luck to be blackened.”
Tying the knot
Not just a metaphor, tying the knot is a medieval Scottish custom that symbolises the joining of two clans. Known as ‘handfasting’ the bride and groom’s wrists are bound together with a piece of cloth – usually the clans’ respective tartans.
It sounds quite romantic, but centuries ago if the bride had not produced a child, or wasn’t imminently about to do so, within the first year of the knot being tied, the groom could divorce her without recourse.
Handfasting remains a recognised element of Scottish wedding ceremonies – happily, the baby-or-divorce clause is not.
The uninvited guests
A wedding gatecrasher is rarely welcomed, but in large parts of Ireland it would be considered good luck to have a group of men turn up donning conical hats made of straw that completely covered their faces.
According to Ask about Ireland, the ‘straw boys’ would typically dance with the bride, play music and sing before then departing. They were “uninvited but expected”, wrote Anne O’Dowd in her book Straw, Hay and Rushes in Irish Folk Tradition. She highlighted one account of their antics from a wedding in county Longford:
“The procedure was as follows: the captain [of the straw boys] called for the bride and groom and shook hands with them and wished them long life and happiness. They would take part in dancing but wouldn’t stay long. They were never unwelcome or refused admittance, though it often happened [they] left the guests short of drink.”
But why the straw hats? Well a common trait in the lives of rural ancestors was the use of raw materials close at hand. Straw was in plentiful supply and became closely associated with luck and folklore.
Penny for your wedding party
No-one wants to be late for their wedding, but it was a very real possibility in Victorian England.
In some areas, children would routinely rope off the route to the place of marriage and demand payment from the bridal party to be allowed to pass, says Lucy Cory Allen, whose PhD focused on class and weddings between 1836 and 1914. She found instances of cases in Somerset, Chester and Yorkshire as late as 1910 where brides had to pay such a toll.
“In the Victorian period there was a very strong sense of community and charity at the time of a wedding,” explains Cory Allen, who is now a registrar. “So if you were getting married and known to be a particularly well-off family, there was an expectation that you provided something for the less well-off in your area, especially for a child, [there was this idea] that you'd get a penny out of it.”
Crossing the threshold
We're now more likely to associate crossing the threshold with a tongue-in-cheek nod to the wedding night. But in the Victorian period, it was something more complex. In some communities, people would build ornate arches dressed with evergreen plants, under which the couple (typically those from manor families) would pass on their wedding day.
“There was a very strong resonance with crossing the threshold and that liminal space between this life and the spiritual life, of going through the arch and from one state into another,” says Cory Allen.
It was particularly pertinent for women, who had less of an identity when they were single, she explains. “Coming out on the other side as this fully-formed married person with an identity is about as Victorian as it gets.”
A perhaps slightly more fun take on the idea was the custom known as ‘jumping the broomstick’ – a tradition mentioned in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations that involved newlyweds leaping over an obstacle to mark a marriage.
“I suspect it worked in a similar way to the threshold folklore of the arches – to symbolise moving from one past state of being to another,” adds Cory Allen.
Make some noise
People have long made their feelings known about weddings, whether that be for reasons of superstition, celebration or even disapproval. In 19th-century Yorkshire, it was custom to do so by filling an anvil with a combustible substance and firing it.
“It comes up in newspapers and accounts of wedding superstitions that in the event of a wedding, there would be these firing customs,” explains Cory Allen. “There's this celebratory element to it but some sources say it was to ward away spirits.”
It was also not uncommon for villagers to make their feelings known about a wedding match they didn’t like, as Cory Allen found in a newspaper article during her research. “It was of an older man marrying his younger servant girl and everyone got together and said, ‘no, this isn't what we want’," she says.
They made their displeasure known by beating pots and pans.
“If you lived in a particularly small community and there was a marriage people didn’t necessarily approve of, they’d create this loud, raucous noise.”
Pelting with shoes
We’re familiar with throwing rice and confetti over newlyweds. But in Victorian-era Britain it was very likely that if you were a guest at a wedding, you’d pelt them with… shoes. It was so common that author James Crombie sweepingly referred to it in 1895 as a “custom we are all familiar with”.
But even then, at the apparent height of its popularity, he was confused as to why.
“As the outset of one’s married life is apt to be ominous of the rest of it, an abundance of the staple of life [ie, rice] at the beginning is likely to be followed by abundance at the end and therefore those that throw rice symbolise… their desire that plenty may ever follow the young couple,” he mused. “But shoes are not a staple of life. Even if they were, I don’t know that we should have any right to decide off-hand that was the reason a volley of them brought good luck.”
One can’t help but think he might have had a point, and that perhaps it’s okay to leave the odd wedding tradition in the past.