Why Watches are Bad Luck and Other Strange Wedding Superstitions
Weddings are fraught with superstitions. From the colour of the wedding dress to the necessity of having something blue; some of these superstitions are relatively new and others go back years. But they all have one thing in common – if you violate them, it’s believed that your marriage will be plagued by bad luck.
Watches at Weddings
Whilst wearing a watch at a wedding isn’t necessarily bad luck for a guest, it’s believed by some that for the bride or groom to wear a watch whilst saying their vows is bad luck. This is because of the significance of the watch – time. Wedding vows are meant to be timeless and the presence of a watch suggests that one or both of you have one eye on the clock. Nevertheless, whilst watches shouldn’t be worn during your vows, they’re perfectly fine for the rest of the ceremony. The British Watch Company has a great selection of wedding-appropriate timepieces for anyone who can’t bear to be parted from their wristwatch for the entire celebration.
Meeting before the Wedding
It’s always considered bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other before the ceremony, so on the day of the wedding most couples will prepare at separate locations. This bad luck is doubly compounded if the groom happens to see the bride in her wedding dress. This superstition is fairly old, and came about from a belief that if the couple were to see each other they might end up changing their minds!
Crying on the Wedding Day
It’s pretty much expected for the mother of the bride to cry on the wedding day, but many people don’t realise that it’s actually seen as good luck for the bride to cry as well. This is another long standing superstition which is meant to represent the bride shedding the last of her tears before the marriage. It may also have been seen as a good sign that the bride was still an ‘innocent’, since way back when the tears would have come about as a result, not just from happiness, but as a result of her leaving her father’s home for the first time.
New Old Borrowed Blue
One of the best known superstitions comes in the form of this well-loved rhyme. The something old represents someone else’s happy marriage, the something new represents the engaged couple’s future together, the something borrowed would come from the bride’s family and the something blue would traditionally be a blue ribbon in the bride’s hair – a symbol of fidelity.