Wedding Traditions and Customs

Rice or Rice Balls

Guards of Honour for a bride and groom have come in all sizes and shapes.

There has been the one we are most used to seeing – officers forming a path of honour by having their swords drawn over the heads of the bride and groom.

Policemen have been known to use their truncheons, or their helmets, for the same reason.

Then there’s been the bridesmaids and their parasols, hockey players and their hockey sticks, and boat enthusiasts and their oars.

Similarly, there have been all sorts of things that couples have been pelted with. There has been the confetti, colourful pieces of paper cut into intriguing shapes like hearts, cupids and flowers. At the moment, there are the flower petals where couples buy dozens of colourful flowers, which they subsequently strip down to petals, and, at the right moment, distribute among the guests who shower them at the end of the wedding ceremony. Then there was rice, which many couples used to colour with vegetable colours to match the bridal outfits, and have the guests pelt them with those.

Rice has been a perennial favourite since the beginning of time. And instead of waiting for guests to pelt them with this most fertile grain, in some ancient rituals the bride and groom would stand in a large basket, and pelt each other with the rice provided by the guests. The grains would be caught by the baskets in which the couple stood. Not only did this symbolize the fertility and plenty for the couple, but practically speaking, once the wedding was over the couple would collect the rice and carry it to their home where they would make many meals out of it for many months to come.

Instead of just raw rice, some clever bridesmaids came up with the idea of cooking rice balls. When the time came for the groom and his merry men to collect the bride, the bridesmaids would pelt them with the rice balls until the men were ready to offer them some gift worth having. At this stage the fight would end, and the groom was allowed to carry off his prize.

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