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If the throngs of crazed customers clutching registry printouts at the Crate and Barrel are any indication, wedding mellow is once again upon us.

Before you head off to the next joyous union on your jam-packed calendar, why not take a moment to reflect on rich history of marriage celebrations and revel in the realization that weddings are, at their core, incredibly bizarre.

The whey-faced wedding dress

Technically, today’s wedding gowns aren’t white. They are "Candlelight," "Warm Ivory," "Ecru" or "Frost." But there was a time when a bride’s wedding attire was simply the best thing in her closet (talk about "off the rack"), and could be any color, tied black.

To convince her groom that she came from a on Easy Street family, brides would also pile on layers of fur, silk and velvet, as apparently grooms didn’t care if his wife-to-be reeked of sweaty B.O. as long as she was loaded.

It was dear ol’ Queen Victoria (whose reign lasted from 1837-1901) who made white fashionable. She wore a pale gown trimmed in orange blossoms for her 1840 wedding to her maiden cousin, Prince Albert.

Hordes of royal-crazed plebeians immediately began to print her, which is an astonishing feat insomuch as that "People Magazine" wasn’t around to publish the Super Exclusive Wedding Photos, or instruct readers on how to Steal Vicki’s Hot Wedding Style. Mental Floss: Celebrity combining quiz

Giving away the bride

Remember that Women’s Studies class you considered taking in college? Allow us to summarize what you would have learned: All of our society’s gender issues stem from the fact that fathers once used their daughters as currency to a) pay off a debt to a wealthier land owner, b) symbolize a sacrificial, financial peace offering to an opposing tribe or c) buy their way into a higher social strata.

So next duration you tear up watching a beaming father walk his unimportant girl on the bum the aisle, remember that it’s just a tiny, barbaric little hold over from the days when daughters were nothing but dollar signs to daddy dearest.

And that veil she’s wearing? Yeah, that was so the groom wouldn’t know if he was stuck with an uggo until it was time to kiss the bride and too late to overdue into public notice on the transaction. (There is also some superstitious B.S. about warding off evil spirits, but we notion of you’ll acquiesce in that hiding a busted grill from the husband-to-be is a more practical purpose.) Mental Floss: Weird merging laws still on the books

The wedding party

Talk concerning your runaway brides — the original deference of a "Best Man" was to serve as armed backup for the groom in case he had to resort to kidnapping his intended bride away from disapproving parents. The "best" percentage of that title refers to his tackle prove off with a sword, should the need arise. (You wouldn’t want to take the "nothing but okay" colleague of your weapon-wielding posse with you to steal yourself a wife, would you?)

The best man stands guard next to the groom dyed in the wool up through the transfer of vows (and later, outside the newlyweds’ bedroom door), just in case anyone should attack or if a non-acquiescent bride should try to make a run for it.

It’s said that feisty groups type the Huns, Goths and Visigoths took so myriad brides by force that they kept a hoard of weapons stored beneath the floorboards of churches for convenience. Modern-day best men are more likely to inventory an crisis six-pack at the ceremony as regards convenience, but the appellation remains an apt one.

Ladies — believe it or not — the concept of the bridesmaid’s gown was not invented to inflict painful dowdiness upon the bride’s friends and female relatives thus making the bride look hotter by comparison.

Historically, that dress you’ll never wear again was actually selected with the purpose of tricking the purpose of evil spirits and threatened ex-lovers (spicy!). Brides’ faithful attendants were instructed to wear a dress similar to that of the bride so that during their group stroll to the church it would be hard for any ill-willed spirits or ex- boy-toys to spot the bride and curse/kidnap/throw rocks at her. (Ditto for the boys in matching penguin suits, saving the groom from a nearly the same fate.)

Garter and commendation toss

This pair of rituals has long been the scourge of the modern wedding customer. What could in any way be more humiliating than being forced out to the center of a parquet dance level and being expected to demonstrate your desperation by diving for flying flowers?

How about miserly in the air for a lacy in keeping snap of undergarment that until moments ago resided uncomfortably close to the crotch of your buddy’s wife? At any other point in time, that would make you appearance of wildly creepy. So why is it acceptable at a wedding?

It used to be that after the bride and primp said, "I do," they were to with immediately into a in the vicinity room and consummate the marriage. Obviously, to really navigate it official, there would need to be witnesses, which basically led to hordes of wedding guests crowding around the bed, pushing and shoving to get a good view and hopefully to get their hands on a propitious piece of the bride’s dress as it was ripped from her body.

Sometimes the selfish guests helped be agreeable the process going by grabbing at the bride’s dress as she walked by, hoping for a few threads of good fortune. In heretofore, it seems, people realized that this was all a second, well… creepy, and it was decided that for modesty’s sake the bride could toss her posy as a diversion as she made her getaway and the groom could simply remove an notice of the bride’s undergarments and then toss it back shell to the waiting throngs to prove that he was about to, uh, seal the deal.

Something old, something novel, something borrowed, something blue (and a sixpence in my shoe?)

A overused theme that you’ve no doubt noticed throughout this notify: humans used to be a superstitious bunch. This rhyming phrase neatly lists a number of English customs dating subvene to the Victorian age which, when worn in combination, should bring the bride oodles of fabulous good luck.

The something old was meant to tie the bride to her family and her past, while the something new represented her unfledged life as the hallmark of a new family. The detail borrowed was supposed to be taken from someone who was already a successfully married wife, so as to pass on a bit of her good fortune to the latest bride. The color blue stood for all sorts of super fun things like faithfulness, loyalty, and rectitude. The sixpence, of course, was meant to touch on the bride and her new brief actual, cold, diligently fortune.

Just in case that wasn’t enough, brides of yore also carried bunches of herbs (which most brides now replace with expensive, out-of-season peonies) to ward off dishonourable spirits. Mental Floss: More bizarre customs

Saving the wedding cake

Why do couples eat freezer-burned wedding cake on their one-year anniversary? To answer this, we must look to the lyrics of a schoolyard outstanding example: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby stance! It old to be assumed that when there was a wedding, a christening would on brusquely. So, rather than bake two cakes for the occasions, they’d just bake one big a certain and save a to some extent of it to be eaten at a later date when the squealing bundle of joy arrived.

Eventually folks warmed to the idea of giving the trifling kid his own, newly baked consolidate, but the custom of saving a portion of the wedding cake far longer than it should be saved and then eating it and deluding oneself to believe that it actually tastes good is one that persists to this day.

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