A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnicities, races, religions, denominations, countries, social classes, and sexual orientations. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vows by a couple, presentation of a gift, and a public proclamation of marriage by an authority figure or celebrant. Special wedding garments are often worn, and the ceremony is sometimes followed by a wedding reception. Music, poetry, prayers, or readings from religious texts or literature are also commonly incorporated into the ceremony, as well as superstitious customs.
A white wedding is a traditional formal or semi-formal wedding originating in Great Britain.
A wedding reception is a party usually held after the completion of a marriage ceremony as hospitality for those who have attended the wedding, hence the name reception: the couple receive society, in the form of family and friends, for the first time as a married couple. Hosts provide their choice of food and drink, although a wedding cake is popular.
Bridesmaids are members of the bride's party at some Western traditional wedding ceremonies. A bridesmaid is typically a young woman and often the bride's close friend or relative. She attends to the bride on the day of a wedding or marriage ceremony. Traditionally, bridesmaids were chosen from unwed young women of marriageable age.
A wedding dress or bridal gown is the dress worn by the bride during a wedding ceremony. The color, style and ceremonial importance of the gown can depend on the religion and culture of the wedding participants. In Western culture, the wedding dress is most commonly white, a fashion made popular by Queen Victoria when she married in 1840. In Eastern cultures, brides often choose red to symbolize auspiciousness.
A bachelor party, also known as a stag weekend, stag do or stag party, or a buck's night, is a party held for or arranged by a man who is shortly to enter marriage.
A bachelorette party or hen night is a party held for a woman who will soon be married. While Beth Montemurro concludes that the bachelorette party is modelled after the centuries-old stag night in the US, which is itself historically a dinner given by the bridegroom to his friends shortly before his wedding, Sheila Young argues that its British counterpart evolved from a number of earlier pre-wedding traditions for women whose origins are obscure but which have been around for at least a century in factories and offices across the UK. Despite its reputation as "a sodden farewell to maiden days" or "an evening of debauchery", these events can simply be parties given in honor of the bride-to-be, in the style that is common to that social circle.
Strategic sourcing is the process of developing channels of supply at the lowest total cost, not just the lowest purchase price. It expands upon traditional organisational purchasing activities to embrace all activities within the procurement cycle, from specification to receipt, payment for goods and services to sourcing production lines where the labor market would increase firms' ROI. Strategic sourcing processes aim for continuous improvement and re-evaluation of the purchasing activities of an organisation.
Wedding videography is a video production that documents a wedding on video. The final product of the videographer's documentation is commonly called a wedding video. It is also referred to as a wedding movie, or a wedding film.
A bridal shower is a gift-giving party held for a bride-to-be in anticipation of her wedding.
Wedding photography is a specialty in photography that is primarily focused on the photography of events and activities relating to weddings. It may include other types of portrait photography of the couple before the official wedding day, such as a pre-wedding engagement session, in which the photographs are later used for the couple's wedding invitations. On the wedding day, the photographer(s) will provide portrait photography as well as documentary photography to document the different wedding events and rituals throughout the day(s).
Bridezillas is an American reality television series that airs on WE tv and debuted on June 1, 2004. It chronicles the lives of women engaged to be married, casting their busy schedules in an emphatic and sometimes humorous fashion.
The traditional Vietnamese wedding is one of the most important ceremonies in Vietnamese culture, which is influenced by Confucian and Buddhist ideologies.
Personal wedding websites are websites that engaged couples use to aid in planning and communication for their wedding. The websites are used to communicate with guests about their wedding and inform them of the location, date, time, and gift registry. Each wedding website is different, and a couple has to pick what is best for them. The websites can be free but may sometimes cost a fee. However, most couples find that the website fee is less costly than hiring a wedding planner, as wedding planners can cost as much as 15% of the total wedding cost. Criticism of wedding websites include that invitations from websites are too informal for the occasion.
Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? is an American reality TV show on the Style Network. Season 1 began in 2003, Tuesdays, 10 p.m. Each episode runs 60 minutes and follows two different couples who plan their weddings in different states and sometimes a destination wedding in a foreign country.
Wedding Dash is a series of strategy casual video games by PlayFirst. It was released on October 18, 2007 as a spin-off to the Diner Dash series of games.
In the United States and Canada, weddings follow traditions often based on religion, culture, and social norms. Most wedding traditions in the United States and Canada were assimilated from other, generally European, countries. Marriages in the U.S. and Canada are typically arranged by the participants and ceremonies may either be religious or civil.
The wedding industry in the United States is the providers of services and goods for weddings in the U.S., taken as a whole. Every year in the United States, there are approximately 2.5 million weddings. The United States wedding industry was estimated to be worth about $70.5 billion as of 2022.
A green wedding or an eco-friendly wedding, is any wedding where the couple plans to decrease the ecological impact of their special event on the planet. Couples plan their weddings by integrating eco-friendly alternatives, such as eco-friendly invitations, flowers, dresses, photography, and more.
