Nubian wedding with some international modern touches, near Aswan, Egypt

Preparing for the photographs, at a wedding in Thornbury Castle, England

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Wedding

A wedding is a civil or religious ceremony at which the beginning of a marriage is celebrated. more...

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General customs

Wedding ceremonies may contain any number of different elements, however most contain wedding vows of some kind and a proclamation of marriage, usually by the officiant. Most weddings also involve wearing the traditional clothes of the culture in which the couple is wedding. A wedding is often followed or accompanied by a wedding reception.

Other elements may include music, poetry, prayer, scripture, or other traditions. In most societies a number of traditions or customs have emerged around the wedding ceremony, many of which have lost their original symbolic meaning in the modern world. Other wedding traditions are relatively recent. Some elements of the Western heterosexual wedding ceremony symbolize the bride's departure from her father's control and entry into a new family with her husband. In modern Western weddings, this symbolism is largely vestigial, since husband and wife are of equal power and status. In some cultures, same-sex weddings are celebrated.

A wedding's particular customs may be varied, mixed, or invented to suit the personalities, interests, and cultural backgrounds of the couple. Such hybrid ceremonies are more common when performed by Civil Celebrants, as in Australia.

Chinese customs

Weddings in modern China combine both traditional elements and elements influenced by the West. The actual civil ceremony consists of registering the marriage with the local registrar is brief and done without much ceremony. The wedding reception, however, is elaborate and complex. The one prominent element of modern Chinese weddings is the Chinese wedding album.

Traditional customs include the so-called "three letters" and "six etiquette". The "three letters" involve a series of three written letters ("request letter", "gift letter" and "wedding letter") being hand-delivered in sequence by the groom's family to that of the bride through an elderly female envoy/liaison from the groom's family. The "six etiquette" consists of six steps that are carried out prior to and during the wedding day. In the first step, the groom's family's envoy communicates the offer of marriage to the bride's family and attempts to persuade the bride's family to accept. If the offer is accepted by the bride's family, the two families negotiate the terms of the marriage. In the second step, the groom's family, via its envoy, requests the bride's family to disclose the eight Chinese characters that mark the date and hour of the bride's birth. A fortune teller is then hired to analyze the date and hour of the bride's birth with the date and hour of the groom's birth to see if the bride's date and hour of birth are compatible with those of the groom. The third step consists of the groom's family sending some initial gifts to the bride's family. The fourth step is where the groom's family will pick a "good day" to send their formal gifts to the bride's family and to send gifts, cash, cakes and food for use in ancestral worship. The fifth step is the selection, by the hired fortune teller, of a "good day" for the actual wedding date.