A wedding is a civil or religious ceremony at which the beginning of a marriage is celebrated.
In most societies, a number of wedding traditions
or customs have emerged around the wedding ceremony, many of which have
lost their original symbolic meaning in the modern world. Some elements
of the Western 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.
The Western custom of the bride wearing a white wedding dress came to symbolize purity in the Victorian era (despite popular misconception and the hackneyed jokes of situation comedies the white dress did not actually indicate virginity, which was symbolized by a face veil).
Within the "white wedding" tradition, a white dress and veil would not
have been considered appropriate in the second or third wedding of a
widow or divorcee. The specific conventions of Western weddings largely
from a Protestant and Catholic viewpoint, are discussed at "White wedding."
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 and is brief and done without much ceremony. The wedding reception, however, is elaborate and complex, and the one prominent element of modern Chinese weddings is the Chinese wedding album.
Preparing for the photographs, at a wedding in Thornbury Castle, England
A wedding is often followed or accompanied by a
wedding reception, at which an elaborate
wedding cake is served. Western traditions include
toasting the
bride and
groom, the
newlyweds having the first dance, and cutting the cake. The bride throws her
bouquet
to the assembled group of all unmarried women in attendance, and the
woman who catches it is supposedly going to be the next to wed. A
fairly recent egalitarian equivalent has the groom throwing the bride's
garter to the assembled unmarried men; the man who catches it is supposedly the next to wed.