Have you ever wondered why people throw wedding petals at newly weds? Both fresh rose petals and freeze-dried petals, which are frequently used. Some think it's an extension of the tradition of throwing rice, but that is not necessarily true, so let's have look at the various traditions involving wedding throws.
Most people associate weddings with rice, though this is probably because rice is so easy and inexpensive to buy. Prior to the popularity of rice, people would have thrown grains such as wheat or barley, since rice is not a common crop in most western countries. Other seeds and nuts would also have been commonly thrown, though hopefully not coconuts!
In Roman history, it was traditional for the groom to give nuts to his friends, normally walnuts or hazelnuts, to signify the end of his life as a single man. One can only ponder on what the nuts represented! It would be understandable if the groom received the nuts from his friends, since in many ancient communities, such as the Assyrian, Hebrew and ancient Egyptian civilizations, nuts and grains were regarded as symbols of fertility and fruitfulness. Why the groom should do the giving is unknown, though this may have been the precursor to the traditional 'stag night'.
The wedding throw was initially a pagan rite, and grains and seeds were thrown rather than rice, which spread from the orient to the west in the Middle Ages. What people threw would naturally depend on the crops indigenous to the area, and the idea was that the fertility symbolized by the seeds would be passed on to the couple. Perhaps fresh rose petals were used as wedding throws in the middle ages, since they are known to have been used to decorate the bride's hair from very early times.
Fertility rites were very common in ancient times, and we can trace many current marriage traditions back to them or to the traditional transferring of the bride from her family to the groom. The tradition of tying shoes to the bridal car came from the Tudor practice of throwing shoes at the couple's carriage as they left the reception. If the shoes hit the carriage, it signified good luck. This in turn developed from an earlier tradition where the father of the bride would provide the groom with a slipper or shoe, with which he would tap the bride on the head. Oh happy days!
The Italian tradition was to coat seeds and nuts with sugar, as a form of sweetmeat, then throw these at the couple to signify fertility and fruitfulness. This form of confectionary was known in Italian as confetti, and through time the sugar coated goodies were replace with pieces of colored paper, still called 'confetti' to this day. The Italian tradition of coating nuts with sugar, combined with the Roman tradition of the groom giving nuts to friends, are probable precursors of the distribution of colored sugar-coated almonds at wedding feasts.
In England, the Tudor tradition of breaking small wheaten biscuits over the couple's head evolved into the throwing of cake and ultimately led to the traditional tiered wedding cake, the design of which was inspired by the shape of the steeple of St. Bride's Church in London.
