Battered grooms, muddy brides, and laced honeymoon teeth are not yet a complete list of what happens to newlyweds from different countries before their wedding. Every nation has its own customs and customs that sometimes shock us. Here is a selection of the most unusual wedding traditions from all over the world.
Nigeria
The man of the Ibo tribe must prove that he is ripe for marriage. The ritual goes as follows: in a row all the numerous relatives of the bride are lined up, and the future husband has to pass through this crowd. It’s all right, except they beat him with sticks. The brides of this tribe are not so lucky either, because not all African women have a beautiful figure in the Nigerian conception of beauty. To be considered a real beauty, girls have to gain as much weight as possible before their wedding. They are given to special institutions to ensure that they eat grain of kilos and drink litres of fat camel milk. And they’re very limited in their movements. This is a pair like this: a battered groom and a pom pom gun bride.
Nepal
A morally cruel tradition exists in Nepal. Here in advance (for 20 years) agree on the wedding ceremony of future mothers of spouses when babies are still in their bellies. If two guys or a couple of babies are born, the engagement ends. Parents are not interested in the feelings of the newlyweds, except that if the groom or the bride wants to run away from the wedding, he will never be accepted into the family again.
Switzerland
In a clean and civilized Switzerland, which is renowned for first-class medicine, a terrible tradition still persists in some areas and settlements: on the day before the wedding, the bride is doused head to toe with mud. Yes, true dirt from a bucket! The more unpleasant it looks and smells, the more delighted the participants in this unusual procedure. In the making of this infernal mixture everything goes: ketchup, mayonnaise, eggs, beer, kefir, rotten leftover food.
After such «soul», the bride travels to all public establishments of the town accompanied by a convoy of the groom’s friends to demonstrate to the visitors the observance of tradition. It is believed that after such a humiliation, all other future pranks of the benevolent will seem to the wife childish. And there will be no scandals in the family. There is some logic to this, but it is too cruel.
Korea
A joyous event, a wedding, for the Tujia people who live in the People’s Republic of China, goes on with tears in their eyes. Literally. Traditionally, the bride begins to cry daily with burning tears a month before her wedding. Ten days later, instead of comforting her, she is joined by her mother, through as many other relatives, and on the eve of the wedding ceremony, the girlfriends begin to cry. It is taught to women from an early age, as it is believed that the more tears are shed, the happier and more carefree a family life will be. But these are all flowers compared to the customs of Africans.
Italy
In Italy weddings take place in a magnificent, loud and fun way – to match the people inhabiting this «boot». But unusual traditions have also them: the friends of the newlyweds enter the house where the first wedding night will take place and prepare «surprises» for the new wives and husband: spice the conjugal bed or start alarm clock at the wrong time and hide them all over the room, trying to «To annoy» spouses on this important night, more precisely, to make it insomnia and turbulent. But sometimes the company just knocks on the window in the middle of the night and demands that they be fed. Fortunately, the young wife always has a pan of spaghetti ready for this occasion, which she had as a bride.
Libya
It’s a long wedding, a week away from the holiday table. Strange things begin to happen on the sixth day of the wedding, when the groom gives the bride a guff, a gift basket. The contents of the guffa are: fabric, perfume, incense. A young wife, in order not to offend her new husband, must immediately try all gifts. For this purpose, the name is given to one of the female relatives of a girl, such as a sister, who has to take incense from the basket one by one and rub it on the heel of the bride. It is believed that after this ritual, a wife will be able to keep her husband under her thumb for the rest of her life.
