Italian Wedding Traditions

Screen Shot 2015-05-12 at 10.58.08 PM

by Adrian Cavlan of Sound In Motion Entertainment Group

Here are ten ways to make your wedding feel a little (or a lot) Italian!

Be an Italian bride from days of yore and wear green on the eve of your wedding for good luck!

If you are superstitious, on the wedding day, make sure the groom has a small piece of iron in his pocket to ward off evil spirits and that the bride has a small rip in her veil for even more good luck!

Marry on a Sunday, which is still considered the best day to marry for luck, fertility and prosperity.

Make sure to serve “Confetti” (candy-coated Jordan almonds) symbolizing the bitter and sweet to come. Remember that the amount given must always be an odd number, because the union of marriage is of two people so the amount must never be divisible by two.

Encourage your Best Man to offer a toast of “Cent’anni!” (a hundred years!), “Salute” (good health!) or “Evviva gli sposi!” (long live the bride and groom!) at the end of his speech.

Make sure to have some nice accordion, mandolin and guitar music playing beautiful Neapolitan folk classics or Roman or Tuscan stornelli at the wedding, especially during cocktail hour and/or dinner. Of course, if you can have a special guest grace your crowd with an impromptu opera aria, bravo!!

Great food is the very epicenter of any truly great Italian celebration. Serve your meal family style with each table sharing and passing each course around!

Make sure to pair with fantastic Italian wines.

Weddings can be expensive and Italians do not do the traditional money dance, but instead have an even better tradition: la borsa, the bride’s satin bag that she carries at the reception for all to put envelopes containing money in!

How about dancing to “La Tarantella”, getting everyone up and involved, dancing in a circle. You can do this as a special dance even if your reception music is mostly current dance music - non te preoccupa!

Have the traditional Italian Luna De Miele (Honeymoon) that dates back from ancient Roman times and eat a portion of honey at every meal time for the entire next phase of the moon!