custom, part four

The author’s wedding ceremony. Photo by Mike Olbinski.

Over the past month, I’ve been diving into George Monger’s encyclopedic Wedding Customs of the World, which collates information about hundreds of practices that make up wedding traditions. My goal is to consider what the historical origins, development, and contemporary uses of particular customs tell us about their original contexts and about the assumptions they reflect about identity and social relationships, but I’m especially interested in thinking…