The Most Romantic Wedding Tradition

British weddings are steeped in tradition. Dripping with it.

• Not seeing your betrothed until the aisle.
• Having an aisle at all!
• The first meal together being called “The Wedding Breakfast” (this one flummoxed me when I first came across it – how can it be a breakfast if there aren’t eggs?!).
• Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
• Speeches.
• The order of the speeches : Father of the bride, groom, best man – it’s easy to remember that the best man goes last as the groom never gets a chance to refute anything!
• The first dance between the married couple.

To name but a few! You don’t have to observe any of these, or other, traditions. It’s your day to celebrate your love together and that means you get to decide how that happens. In theory anyway, when it comes down to it, chances are you’ll do at least one thing on your wedding day that aims to be considerate of someone else. However, that means that being considerate makes you happy so ultimately it is for you – oh the spiral!

However, there is one tradition that hasn’t made it on to the English wedding radar. It’s an Italian one. Italians have the longest average marriage length compared to the rest of the world, it’s 18 years. So it’s worth at least taking a look at what they’re up to. And it’s a piece of romantic magic.

The bride and groom each write themselves a letter with all of the reasons why they love each other and how they felt when they first met. They then seal these letters in a box, with a bottle of wine from each of their fathers. This box gets opened either at the 10-year anniversary, or at a time when things become frayed. They drink the wine, read the letter, and remember why it is that they loved each other in the first place.

This is definitely something I’m going to do. Just got to convince my Dad that he needs to buy yet another bottle of wine…

While researching for this post, I discovered that Luxembourg marriages are most likely to end in divorce. 87% of marriages in Luxembourg end in divorce. Maybe it’s because they’ve got a small population to pick from… maybe it’s for the alimony, who knows, not me… clearly! I do know that for the purpose of this post we are going to avoid the traditions of Luxembourg. You know, just in case stepping over the threshold left foot first then dictates the likelihood that you’ll end up divorcing…