Wedding Band

The tra­di­tion of wear­ing wed­ding bands goes back to the times of An­cient Egypt and Greece. These two civil­iz­a­tions ori­gin­ated the wear­ing of rings as a sym­bol of mar­it­al fi­del­ity. As a mat­ter of fact, the first wed­ding bands were made of reed or hemp; not un­til the times of Rome did the tra­di­tion of giv­ing met­al rings to brides as a love token or as part of a mar­riage pro­pos­al be­gin.

A sym­bol of unity, in­di­vis­ib­il­ity, and solid­ar­ity, a ring played a great role in al­most all the an­cient pa­gan cults. Later, Chris­tian­ity ad­op­ted the ring and its sym­bol­ic mean­ing, as well as many oth­er sym­bols of pa­gan ori­gin. In cer­tain ways, Chris­tian­ity even ra­tion­al­ized the ring's sig­ni­fic­ance, mak­ing it the sym­bol of fam­ily ties, in­separ­ab­il­ity of a mar­ried couple, and etern­al love.

In­ter­est­ingly, while time had very little ef­fect on the sym­bol­ic im­port­ance of a wed­ding band, it had a sig­ni­fic­ant ef­fect on the ring's ap­pear­ance. The rings be­came far more in­tric­ate and del­ic­ate than the mod­est and simple ver­sions from the an­cient times. Nowadays, the use of pre­cious metals such as gold, plat­in­um, and scarcer sil­ver, has be­come a tra­di­tion. Wed­ding bands are of­ten dec­or­ated with cus­tom en­grav­ings and gem­stones. More and more couples or­der ori­gin­al hand­craf­ted rings from de­sign­ers to em­phas­ize their feel­ings.

Like many oth­er sym­bol­ic ob­jects, wed­ding bands are of­ten sur­roun­ded by vari­ous omens and su­per­sti­tious be­liefs. For ex­ample, los­ing or break­ing a ring is a sign of forth­com­ing di­vorce or part­ing; drop­ping a ring dur­ing the wed­ding ce­re­mony signs the short dur­a­tion of a mar­riage and fam­ily troubles. Many be­lieve in the bad luck of let­ting someone else wear their own ring, be­liev­ing it can ru­in the mar­riage. Nev­er­the­less, it is con­sidered as a good sign for a young couple to in­her­it their par­ents' rings, but only if their par­ents’ mar­riage was happy and for­tu­nate.

De­pend­ing on the coun­try, the wed­ding band can be worn on either the right or left hand. In the ma­jor­ity of Chris­ti­an or­tho­dox coun­tries in Cent­ral and East­ern Europe, e.g. Rus­sia, Po­land, Greece, Ger­many, Aus­tria, and oth­er coun­tries like Chili or In­dia, wed­ding bands are worn on the right hand's ring fin­ger. In the Cath­ol­ic and Prot­est­ant coun­tries like the US, Canada, Mex­ico, Cuba, the UK, France, and Italy, wed­ding bands are usu­ally worn on the left hand.