The Persian Ceremony

Este and I recently went to the beautiful wedding of Hossein and Kat Golesorkhi. As we were witnessing the Persian ceremony, I realized that I had no idea what the guy was saying or what any of the objects in front of the bride and groom symbolized. Since we will be having our own Persian portion of the wedding, I thought it would be good for all the Iranian guests under 30 and all the non-Iranian guests to get a quick briefing before the special day.

As expected, the full explanation is pretty boring, so I'm not going to go over everything here, but for those of you who are especially curious, you can click this link: http://www.farsinet.com/persian_wedding/.

Here are some highlights:
The bride and groom sit in front of a spread called The Sofreh Aghd, which is set on the Eastern side of the room, so the bride and groom are facing The Light.

In front of them sits about a dozen different objects. Most notably, a Mirror (of fate) and two Candelabras (representing the bride and groom and brightness in their future) one on either side of the mirror. Once the bride sits beside the bridegroom she removes her veil and the first thing that the bridegroom sees in the mirror should be the reflection of his wife-to-be.

A scarf or shawl made out of silk is held over the bride and bridegroom's head throughout the ceremony by various happily married female relatives. These women take turns grinding two sugar cones above the bride and bridegroom's head (over the scarf held above their heads) throughout the ceremony to shower them in sugar (symbolizing sweetness and happiness).

A copy of the couple's Holy Book is placed on the spread. For Christian couples, it would be the Bible, for Zorastians Avesta, for Muslims Qur'an, .... This symbolizes God's blessing for the couple. Some couples opt to use a poetry book such as Khayyam's poetry collection or Hafiz poetry collection.

And here is my absolute favorite part! (drumroll)
A needle and thread are sewed into the corner of the shawl held over the couple's head to figuratively sew up the mother-in-law's lips from speaking unpleasant words to the bride! haha

Editor's Note: My mother wants to make clear that this is a very old fashioned custom and we will not be doing this for our ceremony. We love you, Mrs. Perla! :-)