German Wedding Customs

If you – or your fiancé – are of German heritage and you’d love to add German wedding customs to your preparation and ceremony, consider these ideas. My Wedding Chat has been doing some research about wedding customs of Germany and has uncovered some intriguing traditions, including about how the bride dresses. Traditionally, German brides wore black dresses with white veils. In more modern times, brides typically wear a white wedding dress without a train. As another German tradition, brides save their pennies for years and then buy their wedding shoes with those pennies to get their marriage started on the right foot. Talk about some long-range wedding planning!

More German customs:

• Have a close friend or a family member dress in fancy clothing, with a multitude of ribbons pinned to the outfit, and have him or her travel to people’s homes to personally invite them to your wedding. The invitation request should rhyme, if possible. When a guest accepts the invitation, he or she pins one of the ribbons to the invitee's hat.
• Shortly before the day of the wedding, friends and family gather together with old china plates. The plates are smashed by the guests and then the bride and groom clean them up to make sure that they never break up their household. Often times, this event turns into an informal party.
• The bride carries salt and bread with her to make sure that the harvest will be full.

Watch My Wedding Chat for more information about German wedding customs, along with marriage customs from other traditions.