Wearing “something old” represents the bride’s past, while the “something new” symbolizes the couple’s happy future. The bride is supposed to get her “something borrowed” from someone who is happily married in the hope that some of that person’s good fortune rubs off on her. “Something blue” denotes fidelity and love.

June is a popular month for weddings. Not only is the weather generally beautiful for weddings and other celebrations, June was considered named after the Roman goddess Juno, the goddess of marriage and the wife of the supreme deity Jupiter.

However, the Romans had slightly different ideas about weddings in June than we do. In ancient Rome, the period from mid-May through mid-June was considered inauspicious for marriage. Ovid says that he consulted the high priestess of Jupiter, about setting a date for his daughter’s wedding, and was advised to wait till after June 15. Plutarch, however, implies that the entire month of June was more favorable for weddings than May.

Throwing rice (or peas, as in the Czech custom!) is a wish for both fertility and plenty of food on the family table in the years to come. Another popular custom, wearing the wedding ring on the fourth finger of the left hand, has a possible medical origin: according to medieval medical theory, there was blood vessel that ran directly from that finger to the heart (allowing a physician to stir medicinal potions and detect any poison in the mixture by feeling a palpitation of his heart) and so the wedding ring on that finger was also tied directly to the heart.

In addition to weddings in June, according to folklore in Iceland, if you bathe naked in the morning dew on the morning of June 24, you are supposed to keep aging at bay for longer!