The International Club ~ We're back!

[Lady Vulpix]

I was talking to Shonta when she mentioned a bridal shower, and I had to ask her what that meant and the conversation that followed helped me realize that we have different wedding traditions. So here's a new discussion to help us find out more about these:

What are the most common wedding traditions in your community?
Here in Argentina it's customary to have an informal party before the wedding. This party, called "despedida de solteros" (bachelors' goodbye) is usually held separately for the bride and the groom with their respective friends (although sometimes they have their goodbye together), and it usually includes one or more of the following: costumes, strippers, pranks and general abuse towards the couple. The level of the pranks may vary from light to really nasty depending on the relationship between the couple and their friends.

Then there's the civil wedding (at the civil registry), where the bride and groom say their vows, put on their wedding rings and sign a book along with 4 witnesses, after which people throw rice at the couple and usually go to either his or her parents' house for a snack. From this moment on, the couple is legally married.

There may or may not be a religious wedding. If there is one, it's usually on the same day as the party, which is normally a couple of days after the civil wedding. Each religion (and each branch within) has its own traditions, and there are usually traditions derived from the places the couple's ancestors came from, so wedding parties can be quite different from each other, but generally there's food, drinks, music and dancing, and 3 traditions which are common to most weddings: the flowers which the bride throws without looking and all the single women try to catch, the garters which the bride wears during the party until she passes them on to her single friends, and the wedding cake which is sliced by the couple and rarely eaten by anyone because everyone's already stuffed by that time. Wedding parties tend to last for many hours and usually end between 5 and 7 in the morning. The bride usually wears a white dress to the party, although there have been exceptions.

After the party, the couple goes off to their honeymoon which usually lasts for about a week.

These days same-sex marriages are allowed, so where it says "bride and groom" it may be exchanged for "both grooms" or "both brides". I don't know how they handle the flowers and garters, though. I haven't been to a same-sex wedding yet.

It's also very common for couples to move in together without getting married, and that kind of union has its own legal status as well as some benefits. Sometimes couples decide to get married after having lived together for a few years.