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Have you ever stopped to wonder how other couples around the world celebrated their big day? Sure enough, you probably got your arms too full with all the little details of your own wedding day to even think about other people's weddings. But just because you're too stressed out does not mean you can not put down that massive wedding checklist and see for yourself how others halfway around the world are faring up. Maybe you might even get a couple of ideas.
China
In modern-day China, brides are encouraged to display their families' wealth by going through three wardrobes changes in a day. It's stressful enough to pick, dress and fit in to the right wedding gown for your big day, but to go through the hassle of wearing three? At first, the bride wears what they call a qipao, the traditional silk wedding dress that comes in red to symbolize good luck. The dress is loose-fitting and covers every strip of skin except for the bride's face, hands and feet. Next, she changes into a poufy, white, ball-gown style not unlike many of the traditional Aussie wedding gowns. Then toward the end of the day, she slips into a more comfortable gown or even cocktail dress of her choice.
Scotland
A wedding and the years that follow are not trivial things. The two people who are to go through this fateful day have to be absolutely prepared mentally and emotionally for their marriage. This is why the folks over at Scotland have thought up a way of getting the bride (and sometimes the groom) mentally ready for this day-by dousing her in buckets and buckets of garbage. The Scots call this dirty, messy ritual "blackening the bride," where the bride's friends catch her off guard and dumping all sorts of disgusting stuff on her. It can be rotten eggs, spoiled milk, mud, flour, feather, a combination of all of these or anything that reminds you of the word "garbage." It is said that the humiliation that the bride goes through prepares her for the obstacles of married life ahead.
Mauritania
While in most other parts of the world, women go into an obsessive weight loss mission to make sure they're fit and trim enough to slip into their wedding gowns, the women of Mauritania scramble to make themselves very, very fat. This is because, for men, having fat wives are a sign that they are wealthy enough to provide her most basic needs. They can not do with a slim and slender wife, or else their neighbors will think he is not making enough to fend for her. Not so fast for women who have given up on trying to be healthy. If you're a bride in Mauritania, you have to be sent to a wife-fattening farm where you have to eat up to 16,000 calories per day. It's one thing to stop obsessing about body image, but it's also another thing to keep yourself healthy.
Russia
A Russian bride-to-be and her family play extremely hard to get when a man decides to ask for her hand in marriage. Before the wedding takes place, the groom has to go to the bride's family's house and formally ask to be betrothed. Naturally, the family refuses and requests the groom to do all sorts of silly things for them. He is asked to sing, dance and do foolish acts of showing his preparation for marriage, such as putting diapers on a baby doll. If the family still refuses, the groom has to pay a certain amount of money or jewelery to "ransom" his bride. All's well that ends well, do not you think?
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Source by Chris McCafferty
