Did You Know? - Always Forever

Wedding Costs

Traditionally the parents of the bride footed the wedding bill but today 30% of all weddings are paid for by the bride and groom.

June is the most popular month for weddings at 10.8%, August is next at 10.2%. The Roman goddess Juno was said to rule over marriage, the hearth and childbirth, hence the popularity of June weddings.
Engagement and wedding rings are worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because it was once thought that a vein in that finger led straight to the heart.
Diamonds set in gold or silver became popular as betrothal rings among wealthy Venetians towards the end of the fifteenth century.
In the symbolic language of jewels, a sapphire in a wedding ring means marital happiness.
A pearl engagement ring is said to be bad luck because its shape echoes that of a tear.
Queen Victoria started the Western world’s white wedding dress trend in 1840- before then the bride simply wore the best dress she had. In Japan, white was always the color of choice for bridal ensembles, long before Queen Victoria popularized it in the Western world.
Brides carry or wear “something old” on their wedding day to symbolize continuity with the past.
The “something blue” in a bridal ensemble symbolizes purity, fidelity, and love.

The tradition of the wedding cake comes from ancient Rome, where revelers broke a loaf of bread over a bride’s head for fertility’s sake.
The custom of tiered cakes emerged from a game where the bride and groom attempted to kiss over an ever-higher cake without knocking it over.
Princess Victoria established the tradition of playing Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” during her wedding processional in 1858.
The bride stands to the left of the groom during a Christian ceremony, because in bygone days he needed his right hand to fight off other suitors.

2.3 million couples wed every year in the United States. Roughly 6,200 per day.
#1 wedding city in the US is Las Vegas at 114,000 weddings per year.
Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve are the two busiest “marriage” days.
Utah and Arkansas are the cheapest states to marry in while New York, North and Central New Jersey and Chicago are the most expensive places to wed.
Seventeen tons of gold are made into wedding rings each year in the United States.
Queen Victoria’s wedding cake weighed a whopping 300 pounds.
Legend says single women will dream of their future husbands if they sleep with a slice of groom’s cake under their pillows.
An old wives’ tale- if the younger of two sisters gets married first, the older sister must dance barefoot at the wedding or risk never landing a husband.
In many cultures around the world, including Celtic, Hindu and Egyptian weddings, the hands of a bride and groom are literally tied together to demonstrate the couple’s commitment to each other and their new bond as a married couple (giving us the popular phase “tying the knot”).
In South Africa, the parents of both bride and groom traditionally carried fire from their hearths to light a new fire in the newlyweds’ hearth.