French Wedding Traditions and Customs Speech or Presentation

French Wedding Traditions and Customs - Speech or Presentation Example As culture and identity are closely associated with each other, it is our responsibility to maintain and preserve our cultural identity for the new generation as well as for people outside our culture. Because, cultural heritage offers people a genuine window to look closely at the richness and grandeur of the past and present of a society or a community. This paper briefly addresses the cultural heritage of the French society and introduces particularly the French traditions and customs related to the wedding ceremonies of French people. When it comes to describing traditions and customs, a lot of speculation is based on the current trend of avoiding or neglecting these traditional views by today’s younger generation. However, that does not paint a sad picture. Some traditions and customs are still followed by the French people in their wedding styles. The paper also discusses briefly the different wedding ceremonies followed by the French communities, along with all the sign ificant aspects relating to the traditional French wedding. French wedding ceremonies: Wedding ceremonies have always been a fascination with the bride and groom taking vows of being faithful and loyal to each other for the rest of their lives. It has always been like a fairytale with the spouses being given special treatment like prince and his princess. French wedding ceremonies also speak of the same charisma that is as fascinating as any other wedding tradition. This further requires a deeper glance into the history of French weddings. When it comes to describing a traditional French wedding, its varied customs and traditions spell of myriad hues of love and romance. As the customs and traditions indicate the important aspects of marriage, the traditional aspects involve a number of things to be discussed briefly in the following sections. Wedding costume: A traditional French wedding is usually synonymous with love and romance as repeated above. Therefore, the wedding costume gets a lot of special attention. Moreover, the design of the wedding costume involves serious consideration of the traditional values. Starting with the Medieval and Renaissance periods, French wedding costumes were just the elaborate versions of contemporary dresses in the sense that they did not require any distinctive coloring. Usually, the bride’s best dress was transformed into her wedding dress adorned by jewelry, laces, ribbons, embroidery, beads, etc. The concept of the all-white wedding gown is relatively new in French tradition. Introduced by Ann of Brittany, daughter of Francis II in 1499, the all-white wedding gown started receiving popularity and acceptance only in 19th century. The elaborate styling of modern white wedding gown is attributed to Empress Eugenie, who wore it in her wedding to Napoleon III in 1853. The idea behind an all-white wedding gown is to symbolize the matrimonial alliance as a token of the bride’s purity and innocence. Now coming to the traditional customs related to the wedding attire, two mo st important concepts are – a) the bridal trousseau and b) the wedding armoire. The bridal trousseau is a bundle of linen cloth given to the baby girl by her parents. The trousseau is also known as the ‘hope chest’ that is given to the girl for her future wedding ceremony. Besides, the girl is gifted with clothes, jewelry or any other items that she would need after her wedding, by her family members and friends. Contemporary customs also include this but in a modified manner of the old custom. Today, the bride is presented with all the household necessities in a stone-carved box by her family just before the wedding. According to the French tradition, the wedding armoir