by Megan Stoddard

Created on: October 10, 2009

Anyone who spends much time outdoors will know that if you see a cluster of green vegetation in the distance, especially if it stands out from a drier landscape, that is a sure sign of water. Just as green plants indicate a stream, lake, or underground water source, commonly held superstitions indicate a time of major transition and unpredictability, or something associated with those times.

Weddings are a time of major transition, and always have been. Even couples who have lived together for years and considered themselves married in all but name are often surprised to find that their senses of themselves, each other, and their respective roles change once they've had a wedding ceremony. In the past, a wedding meant an even greater change than the right to file joint tax returns.

From preindustrial times into the beginning of the twentieth century, and to this day in less industrialized countries, the economy was centered in the household. Families produced most of their own food, clothes, and other necessities from their own farms, or, in hunter/gatherer societies, directly from nature. The necessary work had to be learned from early childhood, and there wasn't time to teach every child all the jobs. As an easy way of determining who learned to do what, work was divided by gender. By early adulthood, men had one set of skills, women had another, and it took both to run a household.

Marriage, then, was an economic partnership, and it was essential to becoming an adult. Until you were married, you could not set up a household of your own, because there was no one to do half of the necessary work.

So traditionally, weddings are not just a transition between singlehood and marriage, but also a transition into adulthood. For many reasons that it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss, marriage has traditionally affected a woman's status much more than a man's. In many cultures, a girl would transition to woman by becoming a wife. Not surprisingly, more of the superstitions about weddings concern the bride than the groom. Through the ages, it has been a greater transition for her.

What a bride wears, what she does on her wedding day and in the time surrounding it, when in the year she marries, and even things a woman may do or experience before meeting her intended, all have been said to affect her marriage, for good or ill. Little superstition surrounds the groom, except for taboos against actions on his part that would break the bride's taboos.

The

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