It's June and Marrying is in the Air

So it's the month of June. A month of long days, warm evenings, and romance. Tradition has it that here in the US of A, this is the time of year when most folks marry. I can't argue with that, being that it's the month I was married -- way back when. Oh yes, in Toronto, Canada. Close enough.
I remember well the night my beloved finally said yes to my proposal. I can still feel my heart beating wildly in my chest and hear the blood rushing in my ears. I can still see the amazed look on her face. And there was the moonlight…romantic…and glinting off the barrel of her Daddy's shotgun.
Our wedding itself was a traditional western ceremony, with a couple of ethnic twists no one saw fit to warn me about. Like our wedding cake. It was a beautiful three layers, with lovely white frosting. When it came time to cut the confection though, the frosting turned out to be as hard as rock candy. My wife is Jamaican, and it seems to me that encrusted fruitcake and a dull knife is what they offer unsuspecting bridegrooms. I ended up using that knife like a chisel.
There are all kinds of similar wedding traditions around the world. I understand that the Irish also "enjoy" fruitcake at their weddings. One big difference though, is that at least they generously lace theirs with brandy or bourbon; neither of which would ever…ever…pass the lips of my wife's conservative religious family, and either of which I would have very much appreciated at the time. Oh yes: the Irish bride and groom are often presented with a lucky horseshoe to hang in their home. We got one of those, too, even though her parents aren't Irish. Her father "tossed" it at me to catch just as we were leaving the reception. The old guy could at least have waited until I was facing him, and not walking out the door.
In Egypt, I'm told that women pinch the bride on her wedding day for good luck. Then the bride's family traditionally does all the cooking for a week after the wedding, so the newlywed couple can relax. Now there's a custom I could enjoy following. (I refer here of course to the eating, not to the pinching. Ahem.)
In parts of India as the wedding ceremony comes to an end, the groom's brother sprinkles flower petals on the bridal couple. Also, a coconut may be held over the couple's heads, as they are circled three times. These customs are thought to banish evil spirits. At our wedding -- urged on by my new Father-in-Law -- one of my wife's cousins picked up a coconut from a table decoration while for some reason giving me a hard look. I think he wanted to hold it over my head…but probably not for luck. I was about to duck behind what was left of the wedding cake, but then he got distracted.Geese, which mate for life, are often a part of the Korean wedding procession. Tradition has it that the groom would travel to the bride's house on a white pony. The pony would carry a gray goose and gander as a symbol of his fidelity. In my own marriage the symbol of my fidelity is my face and the fact that my wife can read me like a book. If ever I would stray (Note to wife: no, my darling-snooky-poo, I'm not even thinking about it, I'm just writing about something that could never, ever happen, merely as an illustration in this blog, and for no other purpose whatsoever, please please please believe me), my wife would immediately know about it. And she would shoot me, reload the weapon, and then shoot me some more.