Planning an African American Wedding? Ever wondered about the Jumping the Broom, cowrie shells, Tasting the Four Elements?
Read the wedding planning article
African American Wedding Customs & Traditions. An article by Nily Glaser
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African American Wedding
Customs & Traditions
By Nily Glaser
ŠAll rights reserved, 2007
Marriage is the strongest bond the world has ever known. It is a pledge meant to last a lifetime.
A wedding ceremony occurs when a bride and a groom solemnly pledge themselves to one another for a lifetime, some say for eternity, in the presence of friends and family.
Celebrated today, as it has been throughout history, even to Biblical days, marriage and a wedding have been considered a sacred and solemn yet happiest event. Every culture considers a wedding, when the bride and groom enter their marriage as two individuals and becoming inextricably a part of each other, creating a new family, as the highest of all celebrations.
As the saying goes, Love makes the world go around.
Most cultures celebrate the love, devotion and commitment called wedding, with unique customs and traditions. Because the wedding is a wonderful and touching event, brides and grooms want both ceremony and reception to be personalized and unique to them. Thus, they look for meaningful experiences and often adopt customs and traditions of cultures other than their own.
The USA and recently to many other countries have become homes to people from all over the world. These people enrich the cultures with their Old Country customs, traditions and cuisine. It is not a surprise then, that many of the wedding traditions and wedding customs that are so beautiful, have been adopted by brides and grooms of all backgrounds who found them meaningful. In fact some traditions have become an integral pare of the modern wedding ceremony and reception.
If you are interested in the customs and traditions of a specific ethnic group click on it.
African American
Broom - Jumping the Broom
Jumping the broom, isa custom that has its roots in Africa to symbolizes the beginning of making a home together.
It tok on a deeper meaning when during the days of slavery in the USA, African American couples were not legally permitted to marry.
As a public announcement and a statement of their love and commitment, a man and woman jumped over a broom pronouncing their entrance into matrimony.
Today, African-American couples tend to include this custom in their wedding ceremony.
Ask a family member or friend to narrate the history of this custom. It stems back to the time when slaves were prevented from marrying. They developed this ritual as a way to unite in ceremony.
Sweep the broom in a circle together until the story is finished.
8Step EightPlace the broom on the floor and hold hands with your spouse.
Jump over the broom together.
Colonial style brooms were cinched at the waist -- like a witch's broom and bound very tightly with cord. The broom consisted of shortened small sections of straw with the bottom uneven. A colonial style broom would not have been trimmed because there was no tool to perform such a task. Also, there was no need; an untrimmed broom does a better job of sweeping clean a wooden planked floor.
They were made of natural corn fibers that were gleaned from the fields or discarded after the annual corn huskings. Broom making was a popular profession among blacks, both slaves and free men.
cowrie shells
Some African-American brides wear cowrie shell necklaces, and or decorate their attire with cowrie shell because, cowrie shells are believed to encourage fertility.
A note of interest: Cowrie shells were once used as money. Today they are used for purification and as a symbol of beauty and power.
Tasting the Four Elements
A less known and less practiced African American wedding tradition, require that the bride and groom taste: lemon as representing the sour, vinegar as representing the bitter, cayenne pepper as representing the hot, and honey as representing the sweet and delicius times of marriage. This ritual dramatizes the "traditional" promise to love "for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health."
For Catholic wedding traditions CLICK HERE
For Jewish wedding traditions CLICK HERE
For Latin wedding traditions and Mexican wedding traditions CLICK HERE
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