#ThingsLongerThanKimsMarriage – traditions! It’s hard to avoid discussing the most popular wedding and divorce this Wedding Wednesday, but we wanted to focus on something a little more inspiring than a 72-day sham of a marriage: the roots of weddings. Some wedding traditions have been going on for thousands of years and are rich in history, which is why they are included during modern ceremonies. Here in America we may have our own wedding traditions that many couples choose to embrace, such as the tossing of the bouquet and throwing rice as the newlyweds leave. But there are many unique traditions around the world for different religions and cultures, and all quite fascinating too! Let’s take a little tour…

Mehndi

This past weekend I attended a friend’s wedding, which was a traditional Muslim wedding. My friend’s hands and feet were decorated in elaborate henna patterns called mehndi before her wedding. It can take several hours so brides will host a mehndi party with close guests. During the wedding ceremony she’ll also be covered ornately in jewels. Very glamorous!

Jumping the Broom

Jumping the broom is done as an act of remembrance and to honor the ancestors of the past. It is often compared to the Jewish wedding ritual of crushing a glass for the destruction of the temple. A broom itself represents cleanliness, the hearth, and family, and represents a leap of faith into marriage. The couple concludes their ceremony with a jump over the broom, taking a leap of faith into their marriage and new lives as husband and wife!

Breaking Glass

During a traditional Jewish wedding, after the bride and groom drinks from the second cup, the groom breaks the glass with his right foot. This tradition may hold different meanings, such as a symbol of the breaking of our hearts in remembrance of the Holy Temple or our that joy is must always be tempered. It also concludes the ceremony so all the guests shout “Mazel Tov!”

Red Wedding Dress

In China, red is a strong and lucky color. Brides will wear the traditional qipao or cheongsam, an embroidered, slim-fitting frock that’s usually made of silk. The bride might swap into a white ball gown that wouldn’t look out of place at an American wedding as a nod to the popularity of Western trends.

Baby Bridesmaids

Royal Weddings in the UK invite baby bridesmaids down the aisle rather than friends their own age. Kate Middleton had some of the youngest bridesmaids seen in a royal wedding – they were just 3 years old!

Pulling of the Cake

In Peru, the single female will take part in the pulling of the cake before it gets cut. Charms are attached to cintas de torta (cake ribbons), each woman grabs a ribbon and pulls. The woman who picks the ribbon with the ring is said to be next in line for marriage.

Animal Sacrifice

Traditional Zulu weddings, originating from Zululand in South Africa, has the groom’s family slaughter a cow to welcome the bride. The bride places money inside the stomach of the cow while the wedding guests watch. This symbolizes that she is now part of the family.

Zaffe

The zaffe is a modern wedding Lebanese tradition, where a group of dancers performs in anticipation of the couple’s entry and help make it over-the-top. This can either be a traditional Lebanese zaffe of dabke or belly-dancing, or it can be something with a twist to reflect the couple.

Ransom of the Bride

Don’t be alarmed by the title! Russian grooms have to work for their brides. Before their wedding, the groom will arrive but before he can see her friends and family will refuse him until he pays up.  Grooms must perform silly dances, answer riddles, and perform goofy tests like diapering a baby doll or drinking an awful concoction. Once the groom impresses friends and family with this bridal ransom, or vykup nevesty, he’s allowed to see his bride-to-be.

Tell us: What cool, unique wedding traditions did you follow at your wedding?

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The man who swore he would never utter the words “I Do,” Mr. Gene Simmons, is married. He FINALLY tied the knot to long-time girlfriend (28 years!) and mother of his two children, Shannon Tweed. Gene is the front man of legendary rock band KISS and infamously has claimed to have slept with over 4500 women. Thankfully the groom didn’t don his KISS makeup for the ceremony but instead opted for a classic tux.

Here’s the official invite…

The couple shares a love of plastic surgery and a sense of humor.

The wedding will air October 18th on their A&E reality show Gene Simmons Family Jewels. Congrats to the couple!

If you are planning an autumn or winter wedding – you’re in luck! Spa Week, October 10 – 16 is the perfect time for brides-to-be to get perfectly polished and pampered before the ceremony. Spa Week offers brides (and non-brides, moms, sisters, friends, boyfriends and husbands) the chance to get beautiful from head-to-toe, literally. You know, like “head, shoulders, knees and toes.” Starting with the head and moving all the way down to the toes, here are 5 treatments that will help you get wedding- ready during Spa Week:

Head:

Rup Day Spa head over to Hoboken, NJ (pun intended) and get your chakra tweeked and aligned, while you hair is slathered in nourishing warm oil with their 60 Min Shirodhara, Energy Balancing Ayurvedic Treatment for Stress Relief and Hair Conditioning. You hair will be soft as silk and your mind will be clear as a bell!

Shoulders:

Then,  jet-set across the country to  A Touch of Clover Skin Care in San Diego, CA for a pain-melting 60 Min Warm Bamboo Massage, perfect for the most stressed bride(zilla)!

Body:

Get touchably soft skin and the perfect (autumn-appropriate) airbrush tan glow at Atlantic Resort & Spa with their 50 Min Spray Tanning with Full- Body Exfoliation.

Legs:

Ensure you’re wedding dress fits flawlessly; rid your gams of dimples with a 65 Min Triactive Laserdermology and Endermologie Combination to Reduce Cellulite from Cellulite Center at Luminesa Medi-Spa in NYC. It may sound like science-fiction but this treatment will help you lose inches while smoothing, tightening and toning.

Hands & Toes:

For picture-perfect tootsies, Allure Day Spa in Davie, FL has your nails covered – in pumpkin that is! Their 90 Min Pumpkin Therapy Manicure and Pedicure will insure your hands and feet are deliciously rubbed, buffed and polished.

To find all of these $50 treatments and more, visit SpaWeek.com and book your appointment today!

Rain, rain, go away. Don’t come back on my wedding day. Over the weekend, Hurricane Irene ruined so many things: from Freshman move-in day at NYU to The Dave Matthews Band Caravan festival on Governors Island. And now you can add true love to that list. Irene’s tyrannical rampage soaked-out weddings, stranded guests and forced bridal parties to head for higher ground… However, there were a few happy hopefuls that chose to weather the elements and continue their nuptials. I mean, hey, the show must go on, right? Take a look at some of the most adorably devastating wedding accounts of six almost-newlyweds from across the East Coast.
Bride-to-be Rona Geller reluctantly called off her Long Island, NY nuptials which were supposed to happen on Sunday. “It was the hardest decision I ever made,” said Geller. Geller initially tried to ignore the depressing weather updates, because she didn’t want to be “one of those panicked brides.” But eventually, she and fiancé Michael Field realized they had no choice in the matter—they now plan to wed on Oct. 16. Ironically, Field is the nephew of meteorologist Frank Field, and cousin to TV weather-watchers Storm Field and Allison Field. Also, Field’s brother, Joe, married wife Robyn during Hurricane Bertha, a Category 3 churner that hit Long Island in 1996.
Wedding Guests in Vermont weren’t so lucky. At least a dozen wedding guests were airlifted by helicopter from a Vermont town of Pittsfield on Tuesday where they had been stranded since Tropical Storm Irene hit two days earlier, turning rivers into roiling flood waters that washed away the only road in town.
A Rockland, MA bride has learned that she doesn’t need electricity for her big day — her new husband is the light of her life. Tropical Storm Irene forced their wedding venue to shut down, but that didn’t stop them from tying the knot by candlelight at a local tavern. That’s right — the bar saved the wedding!
Erica Sternin Weiss should be honeymooning in Tahiti right now. But because of Hurricane Irene, her wedding and honeymoon were cancelled. “I was supposed to get married on Saturday in a waterfront park in New Rochelle, N.Y. at 6:30 p.m.,” Weiss said. “On Friday night, our venue called and explained that the county was forcing them to close and our wedding was canceled.” So what did the couple do? Erica and Brett Weiss were married at their rehearsal dinner Friday night, right after they found out that their wedding venue would be closed due to Hurricane Irene.
A New Hampshire couple refused to let tropical storm Irene ruin their wedding and found a new location when authorities forced them to move the reception. Bill Luquette and Kyla Brown said they decided not to postpone their wedding when they heard Irene was expected to reach New Hampshire Sunday but they were left scrambling for a venue when the Windham Fire Department told them the reception they were planning at Searles Castle in Windham would not be safe during the storm, the New Hampshire Union-Leader reported Tuesday. The couple said they found a new location, the basement of St. Peter Church in Auburn, and the disc jockey, Mr. Jonathan DJ, was able to organize a reception with catering services in only 3 hours.
Hurricanes and Melissa Cook just don’t get along. Last August, she and her boyfriend, Jason Archbell, got engaged on a trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina; the celebratory week at the beach was cut short when Hurricane Earl prompted mandatory evacuations. This August, the happy couple from Philadelphia made a return trip to welcome 150 guests to their wedding, planned for Saturday at Jennette’s Pier, a brand-new reception area perched atop the Atlantic Ocean. On Wednesday night, they learned from The Weather Channel that their plans had been scuttled yet again, this time by a blustery bully named Irene. “I saw the words ‘mandatory evacuation,’ and I just burst into tears,” says Cook, 29 and a civil engineer. “My thinking was because it happened this time last year, there’s no way it could happen again.” But it did. “I haven’t found someone to marry us quite yet,” says Cook. “But come hell or high water, I have said I will go on my honeymoon as a married woman.” (The honeymoon, to Aruba, was selected “very intentionally” because it’s outside the typical hurricane track.)

The dress, the flowers, the venue, the cake… These days planning a wedding can be seriously stressful. All those choices can lead to crazy Bridezilla and an unethused Groom. During the wedding planning, defuse heated debates and keep sparks alive  by writing your own wedding vows. From funny to silly to serious and everywhere in between, here are six different wedding vows to fit (almost) every relationship:

1. Pirate Vows

Groom: I, Mad Dog [name] take ye, Saucy [Bride] as me Heart, me Soul, me Good Wench with a stout right hook, the bright dawn of each new day and the soft bed of each day’s night. I promise to love ye and honor ye; to make ye laugh when yer feelin’ out of sorts and pretend to listen to ye when ye babble on and on about nothin’ in particular. I will protect you from the elements and the elephants should we ever encounter them as it is my understanding that they can be very large and unpredictable. I will love thee through scurvy and through fire, in wealth or poverty whether ye be near or far. And when I speak of treasure, as I am wont to do, everyone within the sound of me voice will know that what I am really speaking about is you. All of this will I undertake until there are no horizons left to chase and the rum is gone.

Bride: I, Saucy [name] take ye, Mad Dog [Groom] as me Heart, me Soul, me Salty Jack with a crooked smile, the foggy haze of each new day and the lumpy (but familiar) mattress of each day’s night. I promise to love ye and honor ye; to make ye laugh so hard the rum comes out yer nose and pretend to listen to ye when ye babble on about nothin’ in particular. I will protect you from my wrath and from giraffes which I understand are very tall and will sometimes step on people because they are not looking where they are stepping. I will love thee through scurvy and through fire, in wealth or poverty whether ye be near or far. And when I speak of treasure, as I am wont to do, everyone within the sound of me voice will know that I am day dreaming again. All of this will I undertake until there are no horizons left to chase and the rum is gone.

2. Zombie Vows

Bride: My love, as I gaze into your mesmerizingly vacant crimson eyes, stroke the pale, flaking skin of your cheek, and drool over the human arm that you dragged behind you down the aisle, I cannot help but smile knowing that you have chosen me with which to spend the rest of undead eternity. “’Till death do us part” is but a mundane mortal musing; you and I will shuffle through the streets, trudge over the grasslands, and limp along the seashore for every sunrise and sunset to come. I cannot wait to feast on the living with you by my side and to admire your strength and your focus as you tastefully terrorize the mortal population. There is no other woman, living or dead, with whom I would rather spend a mindless and unending undead existence. I love you more than death itself.

3. The Princess Bride Vows

The Impressive Clergyman: Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…
The Impressive Clergyman: And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva…
The Impressive Clergyman: So tweasure your wuv.
Prince Humperdinck: Skip to the end.
The Impressive Clergyman: Have you the wing?
The Impressive Clergyman: …and do you,Pwincess Buwwercup…
Prince Humperdinck: Man and wife. Say man and wife.
The Impressive Clergyman: Man an’ wife.

4. Dr. Seuss Vows

Minister: Will you take her as your wife? Will you love her all your life?
Groom: Yes, I take her as my wife, Yes, I’ll love her all my life.
Minister: Will you have, and also hold Just as you have at this time told?
Groom: Yes, I will have, and I will hold, Just as I have at this time told, Yes, I will love her all my life As I now take her as my wife.

5. Wedding Crashers Vows

Groom: “I, [name], take you, [Bride], to be my wife, my best friend, and my first mate. Through sickness and health, clear skies and squalls.”
Bride: “I, [name], take you, [Groom], to be my best friend and my captain, to be your anchor and your sail, your starboard and your port.”

6. Star Wars Vows

Groom: My Queen, may the Force be with us as we travel through the galaxy of life. I pledge to never turn to the Dark Side but stand forever in the illumination of our love. I vow to fight the Evil Emperor and I invite you take your place at my side as we rule the galaxy. Take my hand and stand with me for light and justice throughout our lives.

Bride: My Jedi, my love, I take your hand and accept your pledge. May the force be strong with us all the days of our lives. There is good in you, I sense it. Remain a Jedi and I will stand by you. I pledge to you my love and my companionship as long as I live.