30 Wacky Wedding Customs

1-All tied up

In the distant past, the vast majority of weddings in this country were ones where the brides were forced to marry people they did not love, so that the families could get status out of it. To stop them objecting to the weddings, the brides were gagged. There was nothing legally or in the eyes of most men morally wrong in this. Time has passed and the laws of the land as well as the attitudes of most people have changed, but the tradition of the bound and gagged bride at the altar still remains. Some of the more conservative priests indeed refuse to marry a bride who is not tied up at the altar. As it is the tradition for brides to pretend to struggle, a cunning kiddnapper could hide and transport an adult woman kidnap victim in plain sight by dressing her in bridal clothes as well as bondage.

2-The Duel

Many centuries ago, there was a rather strange law that if the best man dueled the groom with swords outside the church on the day of the wedding and killed the groom he couild have the bride. A vestige of this remains at some weddings where the swords are wooden and padded and the duel is fought for fun.

3-Man, I feel like a Woman

Because the bride and groom are said to be becoming one person, a custom has grown up that at the wedding they cross dress, the groom in the bridal outfit and the bride in the tux. Generally the more expensive the wedding, the better the attempt to pass as the opposite gender will be. At the most expensive weddings, temporary voice changing spells and very well done disguises and make up make the bride and groom look and sound exactly like each other.

4-Snap Crackle Bang!

In this country, there is a law that no wedding is legally binding until at least one firework has been set off. Poor families set off a token firecracker, middle class familes have a small firework display, and the large displays set off at the weddings of the nobles and the royal family are truely a sight to behold. In times of drought, large expensive weddings must be held at the seaside by law, to avoid the risk of catastrophic fires, and every church has a bucket of water by the altar. The law was put in by a firework loving king, and was kept by his successors to protect the country's thriving firework industry.

5-No Photos!

Once the country was very Spartan, and people were made to marry naked so that any visible disabilities could be noted in time, in which case if they could not be cured then the state forbade the wedding to take place. Now that the country has moved on from those days, only the very poor, to save money, and the greatest nobles and royalty, for which oddly the old law still applies, have their wedding stark naked.

6-Monarchs for a Day

Every bride and groom at their wedding wear crowns, which range from paper crowns for the poor through wreaths of laural leaves for the middle class to golden, bejeweled coronets for the aristocrats. It is also the done thing to call them 'Your Majesty' on their wedding day, regardless of their real rank or lack of it and nobody minds this, not even the most stuck-up nobles.

7-Love Potion

A powerful love potion that can only be legally made or owned by the priests of the state religion is given to both the bride and groom at the altar, with the result that if they were not deeply in love with each other before, they are now. Unless an antidote is given, the effect of the potion will last for the entire lives of those who take it. Since this was made a tradition, divorces, wife beating and marital rape has dropped to near zero, as has the number of adulterous affairs.

8-Amongst the Graves

It is a tradition that weddings are held in the silver moonlight within graveyards, so that the dead ancestors of the family can see and bless the married couple. Perhaps undead have attacked a wedding party, and the PCs are called in to find a way to deal with the problem, be it with sword or sorcery.

9-Only Upon A Certain Day

Perhaps it is a tradition that whilst the commoners and the middle class can marry at any time that they choose, the great nobles must marry upon only a handful of great feast days in the calendar. Orginally this was a restriction put upon the nobility by the monarch so that he could prevent secret unauthorized weddings with more success, but it has continued long since the monarch who brought it in died. Perhaps a noble must marry within a certain time or his father will disown him, but his lady love has been kiddnapped and stashed out of sight somewhere. The noble will pay the PCs well to find and rescue her so the wedding can go ahead in time.

10-My Head Will Hurt Tomorrow

A certain religion rigidly bans alcohol at least for the more devout;except at weddings, when everyone can drink as much as they want to without being impious. So at weddings, overindulging and drunkenness is sadly common, which can lead to brawls. Because of this, weapons are not worn at weddings, to cut down on the numbers of murders and manslaughters committed in a fog of drink.

11-From Ship to Ship

Long ago, an asteroid struck a planet at the south pole, and the melted ice caused the land to be almost totally submerged, killing the majority of the planet's population by drowning or in wars over what little land remained. Most of the survivors live on board ship, and sometimes these ships come together for a few weeks so that they can exchange crew members and avoid the problems caused by interbreeding. The coupledoms that form from this are married on the quarterdeck by the captain of the ship that they choose to move to.

12-When Two Become One

A spell is cast by the priest or priestess during the wedding ceremony that means that what happens to one person, happens to the other. The reason for this is to prevent physical domestic violence by either partner. Whilst it works well at this, it has some serious disadvantages, as if one partner gets an injury or disease or indeed is killed outright by something or someone, the same thing will happen to the other partner. People only marry when they are certain that everything will work well and their loved one has no secret health issues that they know of.

13-Look Into My Eyes (contributed by Chaosmark)

The groom must go up to all of the female guests and look them in the eyes for a full ten seconds. This must happen before he sees his bride and the ceremony is completed, to symbolize looking into their souls and seeing that they do not compare to the soul of his chosen bride.

14-I'm A Poet, And You Know It

Weddings are not complete without often lengthy odes about the lovely couple and how their love for each other started and grew. The odes themselves vary wildly in their length, their quality and who reads them. At one end of the scale, they can be interesting, at the other end, they are epic boredom and the guests who have to listen to them roll their eyes in disgust.

15-The Seating Must Be Perfect

It is thought that if the guests argue at the wedding, this spirit of discord will affect the bride and groom and mess up their happy life together. So the guests are traditionally seated with great care to avoid any sort of friction breaking out. With large weddings with many guests this is rather hard to accomplish.

16-Only For A Year

Rather then have no way out of being married, or a divorce that can reflect badly on one or both partners, weddings only have legal force for a year. If things break down, each side takes out only what they put in. The *first wedding* is normally a big event, renewels if they happen are normally a quiet private event at a registry office. Although if couples have remained together for a great many years and have enough money to spend, they might make one of these events into a second big event to celebrate so many years of staying together and in love.

17-Baby On Board

A couple only get married when the woman is pregnant. Beforehand, it's just *not done* but to not marry when pregnant is seen as a great misfortune which shames both the woman and her entire family. *Crossbow weddings* are not unheard of, when the bride's family take their crossbows, kiddnap the groom, and force him to marry at crossbow-point to avoid the humilation of an unmarried mother.

18-Parental Veto

The parents must agree to their son or daughter getting married or the wedding is not considered legal. And as unmarried couples are looked down on and cannot inherit anything or hold any high positions, this gives the parents a lot of power over the love lives of their children.Most parents do want their children to be happy, but it has caused a lot of trouble between the generations and has even sparked off a few murders.

19-Wrong Way Round

Weddings are held in court and the bride and groom look angrily at each other as if they are getting divorced. Few or no guests are invited. If things do go badly and the couple end up getting divorced, they hold seperate divorce parties that are as glitzy and expensive as any wedding. Most of what is left must go to the ex, so to thwart this they have as big a divorce party as possible with a *divorce cake* which has models of the couple on the top facing away from each other.

20-Only the Clergy May Marry

The country itself is a theocracy of a rather strange religion. In many religions, religious figures are not allowed to marry and are supposed to remain celibate. In this one-only priests and nuns may marry, everybody else is not allowed to. And as there is a law that on the death of an unmarried person, most of their property goes to the Church, the Church is by now very rich. A lot of people are angry about this and think the Church is wrong, but if they are caught saying this openly they are sent to die at the stake.

21-Matching Pairs

In this country, the ruler has foolishly put in a law that people of all classes may only marry someone who shares the same job as them. As a result, the people are in revolt and the army officers are on the verge of a military coup. If the law is not repealed soon, the monarch will soon be out of power and his country a republic.

22-What's a Wedding?

In this country, weddings do not exist and few people really care whose child is who. As long as a couple are in love, they stay together of their own free will. When they get fed up, they just walk away. And noone minds too much if someone gets pregnant after a one night stand. Familys do tend to stay together but only because they want to.

23-Mandatory Marridge

In this country, one must marry by the age of 25, due to a bitter war followed by disease that between them killed a large amount of the country's population. A refusal to marry can result in heavy fines, expulsion from the country or even in the death penalty, although the latter punishment is rarely handed out for that offense and is cancelled even upon the gallows if the person can find someone to marry him or her.

24-In Death You Do Join

It is considered unlucky to go into the next world unmarried, so often the bodies of those who died unmarried will have a joint funeral and be *married* by the priest who is present at the funeral situation. If buried the bodies share the same grave, if cremated their ashes share the same urn.

25-Ebony and Ivory

With the aim of creating racial harmony, the dictator of a country has said that from now on, all new weddings must involve inter-racial couples, although existing couples that were wed before this law will not be forced to split up. His people are sharply divided about the new law; some think it is a good idea to reduce resentment and inequality, others are absplutely outraged. A minority of those against the new law are racist; most are just furious that they cannot marry their loved ones.

26-Kisses

The bride and groom are kissed at the altar on the cheeks by everyone of the opposite gender who are present, and it is considered bad luck to wipe the kisses until the end of the day. This is rarely a problem for the bride unless she gets an itch on her cheek that she can't scratch, but often the groom ends up with lipstick on his cheeks for the day.

27-Band On The Run

Traditionaly at the larger weddings bands are hired and they run in front of the wedding procession whilst playing their instruments at full volume. For smaller weddings someone playing a kazoo is enough, but it is a source of pride to have as big a band as possible, and for it to run as fast as possible to the church, which has caused one or two hilarious pile-ups when a band member tripped over and other members then fell over him or her.

28-Mine In The Mine

In the main religion in this country, the gods do not live in the heavens but underfround. Good souls go underground where they feast in a happy underworld; bad souls are sucked into the cold air where they freeze. Weddings are held as far underground as possible, and the most expensive ones are held in chapels at the bottom of mines. Everyone has water to drink, and the saying of the vows does not last long as it often gets very hot down there.

29-In The Light of the Silvery Moon

The love goddess is beleived in this country to live on the moon and bestow her love upon the loving couples that she sees, so weddings never take place by day as it is thought to be bad luck. Weddings are lit by multicoloured lanterns and by the silver moonlight and feasts often take place in the open air.

30-Jumping In With Both Feet

When the wedding vows have been spoken, the couple jump from a board into a large and full to the brim pool full of blessed holy water, which is meant to symbolicly wash away any ties they have had in the past to other boyfriends and girlfriends. They then dry themselves in private and dress in white robes for the rest of the day.