The Roots of Ritual
by Jessica Cagle
R
achel Mitrani, 25, doesn’t consider herself
or her live-in love, Ryan Penwell, 27,
very traditional. The Eugene couple has been
together for six years now and, she says, they
already feel completely committed and pretty
much married. But to make their families
happy, they decided to have an actual wedding
ceremony back east, where both of their clans
live. Mitrani’s mother has been planning the
whole thing in New York for her daughter,
who has been busy with school and work.
Mitrani is co-owner of Conquering Lion Live
Food, a raw food restaurant (inside of Cozmic
Pizza) that makes gourmet meals out of
uncooked vegetarian and organic ingredients.
Though much of the typical wedding
hoopla is not Mitrani’s style, she agreed to cer-
tain customs to appease the couple’s more tra-
ditional families. The pair will have brides-
maids (his sisters) and a best man (her broth-
er), as well as “a cheesy wedding band” play-
ing at the reception. But Mitrani drew the line
at wearing the expensive, custom wedding
gown many brides choose to wear. Instead, she
and Penwell opted for natural hemp clothing.
“My family was worried that it wouldn’t be
fancy enough, but we’re not very fancy peo-
ple,” she says.
Mitrani’s simple dress is actually closer to
the style worn by early brides. Most women
wore their prettiest everyday dress for their
wedding, regardless of the color. It took royal-
ty to change this trend and inspire women to
buy a special white dress for the occasion. In
1499, Anne of Brittany was the first to wear a
white gown. Queen Victoria later made the
practice even more popular when she wore
white at her wedding instead of the customary
silver for royals.
During the period named for the popular
queen, a white gown came to symbolize purity
and virginity. Before this Victorian invention, a
white dress was considered a sign of wealth
because only the rich could afford a dress that
would be worn only once. With the limited
hygiene standards of the masses, who could
realistically get white clean enough to wear
again?
Many such wedding traditions are carried
on today in the Western world, though most
brides and grooms follow them out of custom,
rather than an understanding of where they
come from or what they mean. Most of our
tried and true matrimonial conventions come
from the European Middle Ages and the time
of the Roman Empire — times when the push
for fertility and the warding off of evil spirits
were both big motivators.
hankfully, the reasons behind some wed-
ding traditions have changed. During the
14th century, for example, European wedding-
goers thought it good luck to have a piece of
the bride’s dress. (Brides were, after all, con-
sidered some mighty powerful symbols of fer-
tility.) Throwing all good manners aside,
guests would begin tearing the blushing bride’s
gown right off of her after the ceremony. To
save herself from blushing all over, the bride
began the custom of throwing her garter to the
men in the crowd. Unfortunately, as happens at
every wedding, some guests would become
drunk and impatient. These rambunctious men
would try to take the bride’s garter off for
themselves. The chivalrous groom soon
learned to throw his bride’s garter into the
crowd to stave off any liberties from being
taken. This left the bride free to throw her bou-
quet to the women in the crowd, who were
pretty pushy themselves when it came to get-
ting their hands on some fertility mojo.
Looking at many wedding customs, it
becomes clear that marriage was all about
makin’ babies. The wedding cake, for exam-
ple, started out as a cake made of wheat or bar-
ley. Romans back in the 1st century B.C.
would break the cake over the bride’s head as
a symbol of, you guessed it, fertility. No one
really knows if this means they broke the cake
in the air over her head, or if they actually
smacked her cranium with it — we just can’t
be sure. But we do know that the Romans fig-
ured the more cakes the better, and it became a
tradition for guests to bring cakes and stack
them as high as they could. The couple would
then kiss over the tower of wheat or barley and
if the cakes didn’t topple, the pair was thought
to have a lifetime of good luck.
T
So, how did we get from a stack of fecund
wheat cakes to today’s traditional three-tiered
wedding cake? Simple. A French baker mod-
eled a wedding cake on the shape of the spire
of the oh-so-fitting Saint Bride’s Church in
London. And voila, it became a tradition to
serve the frosted confection we all know and
love. For good luck, guests have always shared
at least a few crumbs, or a slab, of wedding
cake.
nother wedding must also got its start as a
fertility symbol: flowers. Flowers signi-
fied that a bride, like her bouquet, was in
bloom. In most cultures, ancient brides carried
strong-smelling herbs or flowers, as well as
wearing them in their hair, to bring on fertility
and to ward off evil spirits. The Victorians
made an art of assigning meanings to particu-
lar flowers, such as love to red chrysanthe-
mums or chastity to orange blossoms (those
Victorians loved purity!). Some say that flow-
ers were also used to mask the odor of the
unwashed during the Middle Ages, when
bathing wasn’t so popular.
This may also explain why June has
become such a popular matrimonial month.
A
Roses, some of the sweetest smelling flowers
around, were thought to be at the height of
their beauty in June, and it was hoped that they
would make up for a smelly wedding party.
Most Medieval folks took their annual bath in
May, whether they needed it or not. If a bride
wanted to wed while smelling her best, she
married no later than a month after her soak in
the tub — and she carried roses.
Today, most brides just pick their flowers
for color or personal preference. For our
Eugene girl, it was all about color. Rachel
Mitrani asked her future father-in-law, who is a
florist, to use any flowers he wanted, as long
as he stuck to her color scheme of red, gold
and green. The colors have special meaning
for Mitrani and her fiance, as they signify the
couple’s faith in Rastafari. “It was my small
way of integrating something special to us into
the wedding,” Mitrani says.
When the newlyweds return home to
Eugene, they plan to have a reception for their
friends in town. It will be more of what they
prefer, Mitrani says. And you can bet there
won’t be any cheesy music.
ew
NEWLYWEDS RYAN PENWELL AND RACHEL MITRANI
Tying the Knot
The best wedding I ever attended wasn’t technically a wedding. It was a
pagan hand-fasting ceremony held near the McKenzie River. When my Uncle
John and his partner of three years, Roger, decided “to tie the knot,” a
phrase which actually comes from the hand-fasting ceremony’s practice of
binding the lovers’ hands together in unity, they did it in front of 45 of their
loved ones.
It was surely one of the most colorful processions that the Holiday Farm
Resort in Rainbow, Ore., had ever seen. Led by a Reiki practitioner beating on
a drum and friend singing a Celtic processional song, the wedding party and
all the guests, who went along with the couple’s invitation to wear
Carnivalesque attire and regalia, walked in velvet, capes, wings and masks
over a wooden bridge onto a tiny island near one of the resort’s hidden lakes.
An older female friend of the couple, known to embrace her position as a
“crone,” or woman of wisdom, officiated as the ceremony’s high priestess. At
the end of the ceremony, all of us formed a circle around John and Roger,
who both wore crowns made of pewter and glass stones instead of the tradi-
tional wedding rings. The high priestess unraveled a piece of string from a
ball of red yarn and gave it to John’s mother, who, as the oldest female rela-
tive, held the respected position of family matriarch. She held the string and
passed the ball to John. He took a piece of string and tossed the ball to
Roger. They took turns tossing the ball of yarn to friends in the circle and
back again, until a large web was formed. John and Roger stood in the middle
of the red web and reminded us, their friends and family, that we were all
part of their union.
—Jessica Cagle
Hi-Fi
Video Productions
-FULL SERVICE VIDEO PRODUCTION-
Catering
SPECIALIZING IN ON-SITE MULTICAM RECORDING
F ro m t he p la nn i ng s ta ge
to i ts h ap p y c o n cl us i on , we wi l l as s is t y ou w it h a we dd i n g s it e ,
t a b l e s & ch a i r s , da n ce fl oo r s, m u s ic , fl ow e r s, e t c . . .
An d o f c ou rs e g re a t f oo d!
G iv e u s a c al l a n d le t us t ak e th e s tr e s s o ut of yo ur s pe ci a l e ve n t!
FULL SERVICE VHS, DVD & CD DUPLICATION
DEMO PACKAGES • NON-LINEAR VIDEO EDITING
CONCERTS • SPECIAL EVENTS • WEDDINGS • AUDIO
(541) 338-8222
WWW.HIFIVP.COM
WE TRANSFER FILM
AND VIDEO TO DVD
M
3 4 2- 44 1 0
WEDDING GUIDE APRIL 3, 2003 3