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Engagement ring etiquette – How do you wear your rings?

Mum placing heirloom ring on bride finger

Engagement ring etiquette – How do you wear your rings?

As with many things at a wedding there are some things that people just don’t think about until they have to make a decision on the matter, in this case it’s engagement ring etiquette. When are you supposed to take it off, how are you supposed to wear it and do you switch hands it’s worn on once you’re married? Whether you have a lab created or natural diamond ring, there are actually engagement ring etiquette rules you should keep in mind.

There are a few different traditions people follow regarding how you place your engagement rings and wedding bands on your hands before the wedding, the day of the wedding and after the wedding. As a wedding photographer I’m often asked what is supposed to happen, so I thought I’d write a blog about it!

Engagement ring etiquette

Engagement ring – One of my favourite shots to get during wedding preparation

During your wedding ceremony

On the day of your wedding, you should be wearing it on the third finger on your right hand (your right hand ring finger) – which is probably the opposite to what you’ve been wearing it on 😛 During the ceremony your husband to be should place your wedding ring on the left ring finger. At the end of your wedding ceremony you should have a ring on both hands – your engagement ring and your new wedding ring.

The history of the left hand’s ring finger being used dates back to ancient Egypt where people believed it contained a vein that linked directly to the heart – thereby linking your heart to the wedding band.

After your wedding ceremony

Once you’re married, you are supposed to move your engagement band back to the left land. In doing so your wedding band should be placed closer to your heart, or the closest to the base of your finger. This is where your husband placed your wedding ring on our wedding day. Dependant on the hand you wear your engagement ring on you’re supposed to tell if someone is merely engaged or already married if they choose not to wear their wedding band, and only their engagement ring for whatever reason.

Wedding rings

You could also ignore tradition

As with many traditions, due to it becoming more obscure due to not many people knowing about it, people often not worry about them anymore. Much in the same way the traditional wedding dress colour was actually blue up until a few hundred years ago. But it’s always nice to know these traditions exist and revive them if you’re that was inclined 🙂

Some ideas of what some ladies do with their engagement rings include continuing to wear their engagement rings on their right hand or not even wearing it at all. Some people go for far as to combine the two rings together permanently by welding or adding molten gold. The most important thing is just so that you’re comfortable wearing whatever you want to wear with your own personal preference!

Engagement ring etiquette
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Why are wedding gowns white? A History

Elegant bride in white lace wedding dress holding a bouquet in a softly lit room.

Why are wedding gowns white?

It is perhaps the most iconic scene from any wedding day, the white wedding dress adorning the beaming bride. But why are wedding gowns white? And why do brides wear white? There is a huge number reasons, not in the least the fact that white is the brightest of colours, further enhancing the bride’s visibility on her big day, but it’s a tradition that has evolved over hundreds of years for a variety of reasons.

Alru Farm wedding bride

Why are wedding gowns white? A bit of history.

To be perfectly pedantic, the traditional colour of a modern white dress isn’t actually white, it’s more “Candlelight,” “Ivory,” “Ecru” or “Frost” when putting my graphic designer hat on.. But to the common layman, they all look like a white wedding dress, right? Anyway, the answer to the question of why are wedding dresses white all has to do with the popularity of some people who happened to wear white on their wedding day, and as a species who like to copy our idols, the fashion caught on and became tradition.

Victoria Albert Wedding

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria of England who reigned from 1837-1901 was the first to make white wedding dresses fashionable by wearing a pale gown trimmed in orange blossoms for her 1840 wedding to her first cousin, Prince Albert. Naturally, because she was the queen and the center of all things high society at the time, whatever she wore, everyone tried to copy.

Kind of like how it is now with everything Kate Middleton, or any red carpet celebrity wears being reported on. As a bit of a side note here, Anne of Brittany also made white wedding dresses popular all the way back in 1499, believing that white was a symbol of virginity – despite being married once before. Royal brides also chose white as it was the most difficult solour to achieve using the washing methods of the day.

Before modern wedding gowns were made to be white by Queen Victoria’s wedding, it was quite common for wedding gowns to be any colour. In biblical times, blue (not white) represented purity, and the bride and groom would wear a blue band around the bottom of their wedding attire, contributing to the poem of ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something BLUE’.

Blue wedding dress

The Traditional Colour used to be Blue!

Generally though, before Queen Victoria made it a tradition to wear a white wedding gown as a bride, the most common item of clothing a bride would wear was simply what her favourite, or best garment she had available to her and could be any color, even black. To convince her groom that she came from a wealthy family, brides would also pile on layers of fur, silk and velvet.

This was partly due to the fact that the more layers of clothing one wore meant the less body odor people were able to smell, being that bathing was not something people did often in those days.

Newlyweds share a tender moment under a veil, bathed in soft sunlight, during an outdoor wedding.

In Modern times

Today though, the answer to the question of ‘why are wedding gowns white?’ seems to be primarily because in modern society the colour symbolises innocence, purity and certainly makes the bride stand out in a crowd, like the princess she’s made out to be on her wedding day. It may also be just ‘because’, as that’s what everyone else does right? It’s tradition! 🙂

Everything on a wedding day has some sort of roots in tradition, some going back thousands of years – others being quite a modern occurance. The fact is that the answer to the question ‘why are wedding gowns white?’ is simply because people today associate this with brides and this hasn’t changed since 1840. Perhaps in another 200 years, wedding dresses may be purple? Who knows?

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Modern wedding etiquette

As someone who really enjoys attending weddings, and have attended close to 100 weddings over my career as a wedding photographer, I’m a bit of a sucker for some of the more traditional aspects of weddings. I’ve blogged in the past about the historic origins of some of the more well known wedding traditions, such as the origin of the best man and bridal party, even saying like ‘tying the knot’. But what I’ve noticed over the past few years are a few changes to modern wedding etiquette. Such things like smartphones, hash-tags and things like photo booths just are not steeped in tradition, and yet are fast becoming an integral part of the modern wedding.

Modern wedding etiquette

Unplugged weddings?

Your wedding photographs are going to be your lasting window enabling you to revisit the memories of emotion and joy that was your wedding day, which is kind of why having a professional wedding photographer there on the day is one of the most important additions to your day. Having a professional wedding photographer and videographer there on your day shows that you care about your images, and lasting memories, so chances are you’d like them to look your best right? A common form of modern wedding etiquette I’ve noticed is the rise of the ‘unplugged wedding’ whereby, the bride and groom instructs each of their guests not to use their own phones or cameras in order for their paid photographer to best do their job. This allows for better scenes from your wedding photographer not having to contend with ipads in their face all day, and also your guests can enjoy your wedding, without having to worry about getting their phone out to grab their own shots.

Mobile phone photos of Bride

All hail the #hashtag!

If there is nothing else on this list, it has to be the hashtag, a lot of people reading thins may still not realise what a hashtag is, or even does. Basically, having a unique hashtag developed for your wedding allows your guests to share any photos, video or comments on-line, via any form of social media by adding your hashtag to the description section. This is of course if you’re not having an ‘unplugged’ wedding :). Then via the magic of the internet, all that content gets amalgamated for your viewing. It’s actually quite incredible, and insanely convenient as it saves you chasing up after every single guests for their photos. To make one, simply take say your names (ie Bob and Belinda) and stick a hashtag (#) in front of them so perhaps #Bobbelinda, or #Bobandbelinda. Anywhere you type that on social media, it will turn into a link, which you can press and see what other people have also used that hashtag for.

Either gender in the bridal party

It is entirely not uncommon these days for members of either gender to play a role in either the groom, or the bride’s entourage. Traditionally members of the grooms men were restricted to men, and the bridal party to women, however in the age of equality, it is quite accepted to have members of either gender representing either the bride or groom. Some weddings I’ve been to actually don’t differentiate the grooms men and bridal party at all, but rather have one big group.

Bridal party

Who pays?

With the cost of an average wedding in Australia being a very hefty $36,200, it’s usually  part of modern wedding etiquette to share the costs involved with hosting a wedding. Traditionally it was the bride’s family that foot the bill, however, with the average age of couples that are getting married nearing 30, they are usually living by themselves and financially independent. This said however, due to the modern huge expense a wedding can represent, often the parents of both sides of the family will chip in a decent amount, and then it’s also not uncommon for guests to contribute through wedding gifts that simply amount to cash.

Wedding gifts

Leading on from who pays for a wedding, it’s considered pretty standard modern wedding etiquette to simply ask for cash in lieu of more traditional wedding gifts to help pay for the wedding. This is usually done by placing a ‘wishing well’ or something similar at the wedding reception where guests can add a card, lined with cash instead of a gift. It was traditional that guests were to buy gifts to help the newly wed couple set up their home together, but it’s not not done as much.

Wishing well

Update that facebook status!

If you’re keen on social media, like the majority of young newly weds, then you’d better update that relationship status on the day of your wedding! If you don’t be prepared for all of your guests continually pestering you to do so. Facebook has become a website that contains all the information you’d usually find out through polite conversation, and relationship status is one of those pieces of information that has become something that everyone can know by looking you up first. This can be a good and bad thing depending on how you feel about sharing your information on-line. But if you do, you’d better update your status!

Listen to the couple’s wishes

Along this same vein though, perhaps the newly wedded couple are planning on keeping their new relationship status a secret, for whatever reason. In which case it;s not unusual for them to request no images or anything relating to the wedding be put up on social media until they say it’s ok. It’s a part of modern wedding etiquette that can have huge ramifications regarding relationships between friends, family and even media. So be sure to listen to their desires and perhaps hold off from congratulating the newly weds for a little bit until they say it’s ok.

Mobile phone

There are plenty more aspects to modern wedding etiquette that I simply cant list in one article, including use of websites, clothing, bringing kids and dates. But I felt that what I’ve listed so far are perhaps the most modern of modern wedding etiquette trends that I’ve come across during my career. Feel free to discuss any of it in a comment below!

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‘Tying the Knot’ – History

‘Tying the Knot’ or to ‘tie the knot’ is a saying synonymous with getting married to day, but where does it come from? It’s funny thinking about these types of saying we use on a daily basis, not really knowing where they originate from, but gleefully use them without thinking about what they really mean. In the case of ‘Tying the Knot’ however it’s no where near as dark as the origin of the tradition of having a Best Man, it’s actually quite nice 🙂 I was thinking about the origin of the saying as I have just become engaged myself, and we announced it on Facebook using an image we produced together of a tied knot in between our hands.

Tying the knot

Origin of the saying ‘Tying the knot’

In the US, the saying ‘let’s get hitched’ refers to the practice of ‘hitching’ up your horse as you go to town, or tying a knot in a rope to keep your horse from trotting away. In the same vein the idea was that ‘getting hitched’ was tying a knot between the two newly weds, or in some people’s minds, tying a lady down like a horse so she wouldn’t get away. Because of this, the saying ‘Tying the knot’ is commonly, incorrectly attributed to this practice.

The term ‘Tie the Knot’ came from an earlier time, during the Renaissance in a ceremony called “Handfasting”. ‘Handfast’ and its variations are defined in the Oxford English dictionary as “to make a contract (of marriage) between parties by joining of hands.” Kind of like a handshake. This could also be interpreted today as a proposal of marriage for a specific period of time, traditionally a year and a day. the notion of marriage by the way has not always been an eternal one, with marriages in the past being made for  “a year and a day,” “a lifetime”, “for all of eternity” or “for as long as love shall last” depending on your vows.

Handfasting

The old way in Great Britain for couples to pledge their betrothal was for them to join hands, his right to her right, his left to her left, so from above they looked like an infinity symbol. ‘Handfastings’, which is an ancient word for ‘wedding’ were traditional before weddings became a legal function of governments or formal religions in the early 1500’s. The very word ‘Handfasting’ derived its origin from the custom of tying the the bride and groom’s hands and wrists together. In this period of time, it’s actually quite interesting to note that during the traditional period of time for a wedding of ‘a year and a day’ or 13 moon cycles, the bride was referred to as a Virgin, or ‘a woman not owned by a man’. It was after this period of time that, if the marriage survived that long, longer vows could be taken.

So there you go! Another wedding history tidbit from my research of the history of the modern wedding!

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Wedding ring photography

The beginning of my day covering a wedding as a wedding photographer usually sees me at the location where the groom and his grooms men are being prepared and getting dressed in order to get the wedding ceremony. As a result I’m usually asking for the wedding ring to do a bit of wedding ring photography. Doing the wedding ring photography and other product shots affects such as the shoes, or any jewellery like cuff links, and wearables like ties and suit jackets I like to treat as a bit of a warm up for the day for both myself and for the boys, who may not be overly comfortable with a photographer constantly taking photos of them during the day.

It’s usually the case that this sort of photogrpahy requires specialised lenses and photographic equipment that may or may not be common place in a wedding photographer’s kit – but to do the best work, you need the best camera and lenses for product photography.

Wedding ring photography

The goal is really to show any details of the ring or rings while having some sort of a background that speaks to the type of person the groom is. It’s traditional at a wedding for the groom and his best man to look after the rings so I feel having something like his tie, or cuff links, even the flowers he’s wearing on the day as a background really helps portray this personal aspect of the wedding rings.

wedding rings
Wedding rings
Wedding rings
Wedding rings
Wedding Rings
Wedding rings
Wedding Rings

It is however coming more and more popular for the bride and her entourage to look after the rings, I’m thinking trust is the defining factor here? 🙂 When this is the case, the rings are often placed nearby flowers, or clothing such as the wedding dress. This is again to show a bit of personality behind the photograph. It’s also quite common to find them tied onto the page boy’s cushion, ready to be presented during the wedding ceremony.

Wedding rings
Adelaide wedding photographer
Wedding rings
Wedding rings
Wedding rings
wedding rings
Wedding Rings

This being said however, wedding rings are usually very personal items to begin with, so there is a certain charm to wedding ring photography where the background is as plain as possible. I usually try to find a nice clean hardwood surface to produce these types of photos, as the grain fades away in the natural bokeh of my lens in a very satisfying way.

Wedding rings
Wedding rings
Wedding rings
Wedding rings

Wedding ring photography, I feel is one of the important photographs I must capture on a wedding day as they signify the never ending union of the wedded couple, and as I’m there to capture all the emotion and joy on this most special of days, I figure the wedding rings should also play a major role in those memories! 🙂