5 Weird Wedding Traditions You Have Probably Never Heard Of

A  couple being blackened in Scotland a day to their wedding

You have probably attended so many weddings and think you are quite familiar with weddings and the conventional way it’s done. Wrong!


Here are five wedding traditions we bet you never knew existed.

1. You want to marry her? Kidnap her! 
You want to take a bride from the Latuka tribe of Sudan? Then you have to kidnap her first!

Strange as this may sound, it is true. Elderly members of the man’s family then go and ask the girl’s father for her hand in marriage. To show acceptance, the father beats the man up.

However, if the father disagrees, the ‘suitor’ can still forcefully marry the girl anyway.

2. The bride must cry for a month!
For the Tujia people of China the bride must cry everyday in the month before the wedding.

10 days after the bride starts crying, the mother must join her in crying and then the grandmother. By the end of the month every female in the family must be crying alongside the bride.

You think that’s crazy? It gets crazier! On her wedding day, the bride must ‘cry a song!’ and get judged by the congregation on how beautifully she sang.

3. Potency and virginity test
The Banyankole tribe of Uganda are another weird sect.  When a couple wants to get married, it is the bride’s aunt’s duty to teach her niece how to ‘perform’ well in bed. She (the aunt) also has to test the groom’s potency.

To carry out this duty, the aunt has to have sex with the husband even before he has sex with his bride. There’s also the option of the aunt watching the couple having sex, to make sure he is capable.

4. The groom must be flogged!
These weird traditions do exist, even here in Nigeria.

In the Fulani part of the country, a young man ready to take a bride has to be flogged by older members of the tribe to prove his manhood.

If the man shows any kind of weakness or even whimpers, then the wedding would be called of. Some even die during the process.


5. Blackening of the bride
I can’t imagine friends and family trashing rotten eggs and other smelly stuffs on me a night before my wedding, yuck! In Scotland however, it is a normal pre-wedding tradition.


To show love, the couple would be pelted with every nasty thing you can think of – mud, spoiled food, dead fish and more. The Scots have this belief that if a couple can withstand this, their marriage can withstand any ups and downs.