Rituals in Multicultural Weddings

The trend in the last few years in GTA weddings is to artistically blend and feature elements of each distinct culture or religion of the bridal couple’s family circles. This creates the opportunity for many visually interesting and meaningful rituals to be sourced from the diversity of all the cultures and faiths blended in the GTA. Recently, I officiated at a Persian/Hindu wedding. One of the Persian rituals has the bridal couple sitting on the “bench”. This bench is a very important element of any traditional Persian wedding day ceremony. Also, the same couple decided not to do another ritual - the “Sofreh-ye-Aghd”. There is tremendous history and heritage behind all rituals within a culture, but to fully honour each one would have taken a very long time. The couple decided to only focus on the “bench” ritual honouring her Persian family, and on one ritual from the groom’s Hindu background. In a very contemporary and innovative fashion they uniquely combined the exchange of rings and the exchange of flower wreaths at that same point in their modern and blended cultural wedding service. Yes, both family circles were very pleased to be honoured and represented!