American Wedding Traditions

Note from the author: This is something I run into a lot, and I've yet to find anyone who wasn't interested in it. I may not be personally interested in getting married, but I'm fascinated by ancient myths and rituals and how they translate in modern culture.

Tiaras have been a symbol of royalty and good breeding for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian goldsmiths crafted tiaras for royalty, and the tradition has been passed down from generation to generation ever since, typically for royalty and very prosperous families.

Today, women from all walks of life can feel like royalty on their special day. A beautiful wedding tiara made to compliment her features that goes perfectly with her wedding dress is a symbol of tradition. Wearing a tiara shows that you can be loyal to traditional values and beliefs, while showing off your radiance and beauty to your current and new relatives. It is traditionally important to be the most beautiful woman in the room on your wedding day! American wedding traditions are a hodgepodge of different traditions from virtually all countries. In the United States, it is traditional for the woman to wear a white dress, the man to wear a black tux, and for the wedding party to match the wedding flowers. The old adage "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" is supposed to symbolize pieces of the bride's ensemble, and is supposed to ward off bad luck.

American weddings are almost completely customizable. Whether you want your wedding in a small church, a large temple, out in nature or in your back yard, it's certainly up to you. Some will release doves during the ceremony, some will have confetti or rice. Most weddings have flower arrangements and cake is a staple at the wedding reception.

Your traditional bridal tiara may seem like a small thing in the light of everything else that happens on your special day, but your tiara is your crown! It accents your hair and gives you a more finished look in your gown.

Weddings are so expensive...

Ok, so I'm a single gal and though I've been in several relationships, I've never made them last unless the guy was NOT trying to find someone to marry. However, being a girl, I do sometimes like to think about what it might be like to be married. My mother and father were married and that didn't seem to work out quite so well. However, I've found that many second marriages tend to work better... Perhaps it is because folks are older when they find their second wives or second husbands, and being older and wiser, tend to marry for common interests other than having children and raising them.

With that in mind, I was looking at some wedding things for a friend of mine who is getting married (I bite my tongue around her on my less-than-optimistic views) and I never thought about all the things people need when they're getting married. Really, there are several ways to go about it.

You can have a very simple wedding, justice of the peace, marriage certificate and a couple of witnesses... It's about the same style as Vegas, but not as flashy, and usually no Elvis Impersonator. Or you can go all out and rent some Catholic church for the day with a 7 tier cake, a dress that costs about 4 times as much as my current car, wedding tiaras for the bride, bridesmaids and flower girl, satin pillows, flower arrangements that match the dresses of the bridesmaids and... on and on! The one day in a woman's life when she really gets to be a princess.

Now, the idea of a wedding like this initially is for a ceremonial tying of one family to another through marriage. It is a good way for everyone to witness who the new addition to their family is going to be and the "Does Anyone Object" statement allows them to cast judgment and refuse to approve the marriage. Nowadays, I don't think anyone pays attention when someone "objects" to the marriage, but it CAN ruin the whole theme of the wedding, and some might call it an ill omen.

American traditions come from a large variety of backgrounds and have become cemented into our societal way of thinking over the years as we advance as a civilization. The United States of America is still a relatively young country, which just happened to have been founded with a large variety of people on land that helps us be quite self-sustaining. Anyway, this gets away from my original theme, but it all points down to the idea that our traditions came from such a vast variety of backgrounds, came together, mixed up, and then got doled out in a blended form. I think we are blurring the lines between different cultures in America more and more every generation. I think it will be an interesting place 5 generations down the line.

Yarg! No Tool Tickets!

Ever wonder how people who don't bother to stand in line at the box office six hours before the tickets go on sale end up getting tickets to sold out shows? I have - the lazy bums! How dare they get tickets when I can't? Well, I went to my favorite search engine, Google.com, and did some research (because that's pretty much all I do all day anyway...) well, some people buy from scalpers on the street, other people buy from ticket resellers online! Sounded obvious after I discovered it - I mean, you can buy ANYTHING online it seems.

Perhaps you all already knew this, but in my curiosity, I dug deeper... here's one site that Sells Sold Out Tickets. Cleverly enough, it is called "Sold Out Solutions". clever! So, you go to that site and look for your Tool Tickets and (this may not be the case any more) you see you can get ONE ticket for a lot of money. At this point, I'm thinking that people who buy tickets this way must be horribly wealthy... I mean, the 56 bucks for a standard ticket makes me cringe. It tells you where the seat is (6th row, floor - not bad!) and that there are two of them.

However, not satisfied with the one site I found, I look for more to see if there are other tickets available... I find another ticket reseller called "Buy Chicago Tickets" which nevertheless sells more than tickets in and around the Chicago area, and they have what appears to be the same exact tickets, but for a different price.

In fact, each ticket reseller I come across has a different price for these tickets. I start noticing a pattern, though, and I dig deeper... It turns out that a majority of these ticket reseller sites are actually all working for a ticket network of some kind, and they get their tickets from the main network - whomever sells the tickets from their site gets the credit. It's like earning commission. It's certainly an interesting idea, though. Anyway - now I wonder if the scalpers on the street are independents who got in the line early just to buy out tickets so people like me can't have them, or if they are working for a ticket reseller, too? There's really no way to know, is there? Although, they are probably independent people, I think it's against the law to sell things on the street like that. That's why beggars are allowed to beg on the street, they're apparently allowed to sit there, they are technically allowed to have a sign, but they're not allowed to touch you or even to talk to you and ask for cash.

And now that I've gone off on a rant, I'm going to let this one go for now, and just lament that I cannot go see Tool. :(