If you’re planning a wedding, there’s a lot to remember. And if you’re superstitious, you may have even more to juggle.
Good Luck: Pick a date when the moon is waxing (increasing in size) and an hour when the tide is rising. Also be sure to time the wedding ceremony so that it ends in the second half of the hour, when the minute hand is rising on the face of the clock. Don’t stop there: Everything associated with the wedding should be moving up, up, up! Anything that rises or grows promises rising fortunes for you and your spouse.
Bad Luck: Don’t schedule the wedding for early in the morning. That will bring bad luck—and it’s not just a superstition: in the old days the groom, and sometimes even the bride, needed ample time to clean themselves up after morning farm chores, lest they risk showing up at church smelling of animals and manure. (Nowadays it gives the groom a chance to recover from his bachelor party or whatever antics went on the night before.)
Good Luck: White has been a lucky color for formal weddings in the West for more than a century; for informal ceremonies, any color will do…except for black or red.
Bad Luck: Black symbolizes death—only widows can wear it—and red, the color of the devil, is unlucky too. If a woman wears a red wedding dress, 1) she and her husband will fight before their first anniversary or 2) her husband “will soon die.”
Good Luck: The woman who puts the veil on the bride should be happily married. If possible, the bride should wear the veil her grandmother wore, to ensure “that she will always have wealth.”
Bad Luck: No one other than members of the bride’s family should see her veil before the ceremony, and once she is fully dressed, she shouldn’t look in the mirror again until after the ceremony is over. She should leave one small article of dress, perhaps a ribbon or a pin, undone so that she can add it at the last minute without having to look in a mirror.
Origin of the term bridal shower: English brides used to buy “bride ale” for wedding guests.
Good Luck: Wearing earrings will bring the bride good luck.
Bad Luck: Don’t wear pearls—not in the earrings or the necklace, on the dress, or anyplace else. Pearls symbolize tears. “For every pearl a bride wears, her husband will give her a reason to cry.”
Good Luck: The animals you see on the way to church are full of omens. Lambs, doves, wolves, spiders, and toads are all good luck. If birds fly directly over your car, that’s also good luck—it means you’re going to have a lot of kids. (Okay, maybe that’s bad luck…)
Bad Luck: If a pig crosses your path on your way to the wedding, that’s bad luck. If a bat flies into the church, that’s bad luck too.
Good Luck: Tears are such good luck that if the bride can’t cry on her own, she should create tears “by virtue of mustard and onions” if necessary. Tears symbolically wash the bride’s old problems away, giving her a fresh start.
Bad Luck: Not crying is very bad luck. This is a throwback to the days when people believed that witches can only shed three tears, and these only from her left eye. By crying, a bride demonstrated to the assembled guests that she was not a witch, thereby avoiding being burned at the stake (also bad luck).
Good Luck: When she enters and leaves the church, the bride should step across the threshold with her right foot first.
Bad Luck: The bride shouldn’t have anything to do with making either her wedding cake or her wedding dress. Don’t eat anything while you’re getting dressed, either—that’s bad luck too.
Hands off: On average, kids aged 2 to 5 put their hands in their mouths 10 times an hour.