Wedding Superstitions: Where They Came From and What They Mean

Every wedding, whether the couple realises it or not, is stitched through with superstition. "Something old, something new," tossing the bouquet, carrying the bride over the threshold, these traditions have survived centuries past the point where most people remember why they started. Some are charming. Some are outright bizarre once you learn their origin. Here's where the most enduring wedding superstitions actually come from, plus a few South African and broader African traditions that don't usually make it into the standard list.

Rings, Fingers and the Vein of Love

Engagement and wedding rings are worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because of an old belief, traced back to ancient Egyptian and later Roman custom, that a vein ran directly from that finger to the heart. Anatomically, this isn't true, but the romance of the idea outlasted the biology by a couple of thousand years, and the tradition stuck firmly enough that it's now simply how wedding rings are worn, superstition long since converted into plain custom.

The Unlucky Surname Rhyme

It was once considered unlucky for a woman to marry a man whose surname began with the same letter as her own, summed up in an old rhyme: "To change the name and not the letter, is to change for the worse and not the better." The belief likely grew out of a broader superstition that marrying someone too similar to your own family, in name or otherwise, invited bad luck rather than a fresh start. It's almost entirely forgotten today, but it's a good example of how deeply superstition once shaped even the most basic decisions around who was considered a suitable match.

The Colour Green

A green wedding dress was traditionally considered unlucky, unless the bride was Irish, for whom the colour carries entirely different, positive associations. The superstition around green elsewhere in Europe likely comes from the old expression that a woman had "a green gown," meaning grass stains from rolling in a field, a euphemism for promiscuity that made green an unwelcome colour choice for a bride trying to project the opposite impression.

Leaving the Dress Unfinished

Traditionally, a bride was not meant to wear her entire wedding outfit before the actual day. Some brides still deliberately leave a final stitch on the dress undone until the moment they're due to leave for the ceremony, when a bridesmaid or family member completes it. The superstition holds that a fully finished dress worn too early tempts fate before the marriage itself is finalised.

Which Day to Marry

Most weddings today happen on a Saturday, but that wasn't always considered the lucky choice. An old English rhyme advised the opposite:

• Monday for wealth
• Tuesday for health
• Wednesday the best day of all
• Thursday for losses
• Friday for crosses
• Saturday for no luck at all

Fridays, and Friday the 13th in particular, carried a specific reputation for bad luck, tied to broader Western superstition around that date rather than anything wedding-specific. The modern preference for Saturday weddings has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with it being the one day most guests are reliably free from work, a reminder that plenty of "tradition" is really just practicality dressed up after the fact.

Which Month to Marry

An old English rhyme offered guidance on the month, too, with varying fortunes predicted for nearly every option on the calendar, from January's promise of a loving, faithful match to May's ominous warning of regret. Interestingly, the rhyme's warnings map poorly onto South African seasons; a rhyme written in the Northern Hemisphere assumes June is warm and welcoming, when in South Africa, June sits in the depths of winter. If you're inclined to take any of these old sayings seriously, it's worth remembering they were written for an entirely different hemisphere's climate and cultural calendar.

Weather on the Day

Rain on your wedding day carries a reputation for bad luck in Western superstition, but in Hindu tradition it's considered the opposite, a genuine sign of good fortune and blessing. Snow is traditionally associated with fertility and wealth, while cloudy or windy conditions are, in the older Western tradition, believed to foreshadow a stormy marriage. None of this is remotely predictive, of course, but it's a reminder that a rained-out wedding day isn't universally read as bad luck; plenty of cultures see it exactly the opposite way.

The Colour You Marry In

Most brides today marry in white, popularly linked to purity, but the original association was closer to wealth. White cloth was expensive and difficult to bleach properly in earlier centuries, so a bride in genuinely white fabric was visibly displaying her family's means. An old rhyme laid out fortunes for other colours too, most of them considerably less flattering than white's reputation, warning that red brought regret, green brought shame, and yellow left you "ashamed of your fellow." Modern brides, of course, now regularly choose blush, champagne, sage and even black without a second thought for these old warnings, proof that superstition fades exactly as fast as the cultural weight behind it does.

Flowers to Avoid

A combination of red and white flowers together was traditionally avoided at weddings and in hospital settings alike, since the pairing was said to symbolise blood and bandages. It's a superstition that's largely faded from modern floristry, but it occasionally still surfaces as an old-fashioned request from an older relative helping with the flowers.

South African and Broader African Wedding Traditions

Beyond the imported European superstitions above, South Africa's own cultural traditions carry their own rich set of customs and symbolic practices around marriage, many still very much alive today rather than faded folklore.

• Umembeso and lobola negotiations in Zulu and Xhosa tradition involve formal, ceremonial gift exchanges between families before a marriage is finalised, symbolising respect and the joining of two families rather than simply two individuals.
• The jumping of the broom, found in various forms across African American and some African traditions, symbolises sweeping away the old single life and stepping into a new shared one.
• The lighting of a unity candle or fire appears across several South African cultural wedding traditions, symbolising the joining of two families into one household and one flame.
• Traditional attire, whether Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Venda or another cultural dress, is frequently worn for at least part of a multi-day South African wedding celebration, carrying its own symbolism around lineage, respect and cultural identity that a purely Western wedding tradition simply doesn't capture.

Many South African couples today blend a Western-style white wedding with one or more of these traditional elements, a reception in one style and a traditional ceremony in another, which means the superstitions and customs actually in play at a modern South African wedding are often a genuinely personal mix rather than a single inherited tradition.

Something Old, Something New

Perhaps the most enduring wedding superstition of all is the rhyme instructing a bride to wear "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in her shoe." Each item carries its own symbolic weight: something old represents continuity with the bride's past and family; something new symbolises optimism for the marriage ahead; something borrowed, traditionally from a happily married friend or relative, is meant to transfer a little of that good fortune; and something blue, going back to ancient associations between the colour and purity and fidelity, rounds out the set. The sixpence, largely dropped from modern practice simply because the coin itself is no longer in circulation, was meant to ensure financial prosperity in the marriage.

This is one superstition that has genuinely thrived rather than faded, still followed by brides today who couldn't necessarily explain its full origin but enjoy the ritual and the connection it creates with family members who lend a piece of jewellery or offer up a treasured old item for the day.

Throwing the Bouquet and Garter

The bouquet toss traces back to a stranger custom than most people realise. In medieval England, it was considered good luck to tear a piece of the bride's dress or touch her for luck, which occasionally turned into genuinely aggressive scrums. Brides began throwing their bouquet and fleeing the scene as a way to distract the crowd and make a clean escape, and the tradition of tossing the bouquet to unmarried guests, said to predict who marries next, developed from that practical bit of crowd management. The garter toss has a similarly practical origin, giving guests a token to take instead of pieces of the bride's actual dress.

Should You Take Any of This Seriously?

Almost none of these superstitions have any bearing on how a marriage actually turns out, and most modern couples treat them as charming trivia rather than genuine guidance, choosing a wedding date around venue availability and guest convenience rather than an old rhyme about which day brings wealth. That said, there's real value in knowing where these traditions come from, both for genuinely fun stationery or speech material, and for understanding why certain older relatives might have strong, seemingly arbitrary opinions about your dress colour or wedding day. Knowing the folklore behind an objection makes it a lot easier to smile, thank them for the thought, and do exactly what you'd planned anyway.

The Bottom Line

Wedding superstitions are a window into how seriously earlier generations took the business of getting married, treating everything from ring fingers to flower colour as potentially consequential. Most of it has softened into charming tradition rather than genuine belief, and South Africa's own cultural wedding customs offer a far richer, more meaningful set of practices than any inherited European rhyme ever did. Take what feels meaningful to you, leave the rest, and enjoy the fact that nobody's actually checking whether your bouquet includes red and white flowers.