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The History of Wedding Rings
The wedding ring is the oldest of all marriage traditions. Nearly every civilization since the Egyptians has used the wedding ring as a symbol of the marriage agreement. Click here to view Astley Clarke's Bridal Collection. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, as in many other traditions, the circle represents eternity, having no beginning and no end, and the earliest rings were made of braided grass, hay, leather, bone and ivory.
When metals were eventually discovered and began to be worked, the first metal rings were lumpy and awkward. Today, wedding rings can be anything from an inexpensive, plain band to an intricate setting studded with gems.
Despite the longstanding traditions, begun with the Egyptians, of wearing the wedding ring on the fourth finger of the left hand, because this is where the vein connects directly with the heart, in some cultures the wedding ring was worn on completely different fingers. Elizabethans wore huge, elaborate wedding rings on their thumbs and in the eighteenth century, Roman Catholics wore them on the right hand.
The earliest legends about the use of wedding rings are thought to originate near the Loch of Stennis, in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. There there are two large stone circles, sacred to the sun and the moon. It is reported that marriages consisted of the bride and groom joining hands through the matrimonial hole in one of the stones. A divorce was even more simple, as the pair only had to go to church and go out at different doors.
Monkish legends relate that the parents of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, used a wedding ring made of onyx or amethyst. This is said to have been discovered in the year 996 by a jeweller from Jerusalem and to have worked many curative wonders.
Numerous superstitions surround wedding rings. It is unlucky, for example, for the bride-to-be to go shopping for a ring on a Friday due to the bad luck associated with that day and vital that neither the bride nor groom wear the wedding rings before the ceremony.
View all Designer Rings at Astley Clarke.
When metals were eventually discovered and began to be worked, the first metal rings were lumpy and awkward. Today, wedding rings can be anything from an inexpensive, plain band to an intricate setting studded with gems.
Despite the longstanding traditions, begun with the Egyptians, of wearing the wedding ring on the fourth finger of the left hand, because this is where the vein connects directly with the heart, in some cultures the wedding ring was worn on completely different fingers. Elizabethans wore huge, elaborate wedding rings on their thumbs and in the eighteenth century, Roman Catholics wore them on the right hand.
The earliest legends about the use of wedding rings are thought to originate near the Loch of Stennis, in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. There there are two large stone circles, sacred to the sun and the moon. It is reported that marriages consisted of the bride and groom joining hands through the matrimonial hole in one of the stones. A divorce was even more simple, as the pair only had to go to church and go out at different doors.
Monkish legends relate that the parents of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, used a wedding ring made of onyx or amethyst. This is said to have been discovered in the year 996 by a jeweller from Jerusalem and to have worked many curative wonders.
Numerous superstitions surround wedding rings. It is unlucky, for example, for the bride-to-be to go shopping for a ring on a Friday due to the bad luck associated with that day and vital that neither the bride nor groom wear the wedding rings before the ceremony.
View all Designer Rings at Astley Clarke.
