Spartan Weddings / Customs NOT To Include

This time, how about some foreign customs you DON’T want to include in your wedding?

Sparta was a Greek city-state, known for military lifestyles (Even today “spartan” means simple and bare.) and for constantly clashing with their neighbor, Athens. Spartan girls married around 18 or 20, several years after Athenian girls, but the advantages stop there. No gown and flowers for a Spartan girl. To prepare for the wedding night, the bride’s hair was cut like a man’s and she dressed in men’s clothing. How romantic!

The wedding would involve the husband overpowering his wife. Not literally of course, because marraiges were an affair of the city-state (at some points, the bride-to-be had to pass a physical fitness test before she could be assigned her husband!). The groom would “break in” to his wife’s home… avoiding  the “guards” her father posted to protect her. Sometimes the groom would sling her bride over his shoulder and take her home, other times he would just sneak into her house, perform his, er, husbandly duties, and call it a day.

Married life wasn’t much better. Married men still lived in the barracks most of the time, but met up with their wives occasionally for procreation.