34 Curious Wedding Statistics & Facts Everyone Should Know

Having bridesmaids at a wedding wasn't originally for moral support. They were “intended to confuse evil spirits or those who wished to harm the bride.”

2. Because of the austerity measures following the war, Queen Elizabeth had to use clothing ration coupons to pay for her wedding dress. She was given hundreds of clothing coupons by brides-to-be to help her, but she had to return the coupon gifts as it was illegal to transfer them.

3. Alan Rickman dated the same woman for over 40 years. In 2012, he married her in a secret ceremony and then walked over the Brooklyn Bridge together. They didn’t tell anybody until 2015.

4. The widowed mother of Henry VI was barred from remarrying by a law stripping her betrothed of wealth. Thus, she married a landless Welsh servant, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. His name eventually became Owen Tudor, and his descendants would rule England for over 100 years.

5. Princess Diana was 19 when Prince Charles, 31, proposed to her. Because royal custom required Charles to marry a virgin, nearly every other woman of good lineage close to his age was disqualified.

Charles Darwin and his wife were first cousins. They had 10 kids, 7 making it to adulthood. Worried that his marriage had something to do with the deaths, he began to experiment with plants. He learned that with any kind of breeding, it's better to cross-breed than to keep relatives together.

7. In 2014, Charles Manson was granted a marriage license, but the wedding was canceled after it was discovered that 26-year-old Afton Elaine "Star" Burton only wanted to marry Manson so she and a friend Craig "Gray Wolf" Hammond could use his corpse as a tourist attraction after he dies.

8. William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) was denied a marriage proposal by Matilda of Flanders who felt marrying a bastard was below her. He won her heart by reading the response and immediately riding 250+ miles from Normandy to Bruges to grab her by the hair and throw her in the mud.

9. The “50% of marriages in the USA end in divorce” statistic is misleading. In reality, divorce rates peaked in the early 1980s and have been steadily decreasing since then. If current trends continue, only a third of today's marriages will end in a divorce.

10. The diamond engagement ring fever was invented by an ad campaign in the 1930s. Before that, few Americans proposed with the precious stone, and the price of the diamond was falling.

In medieval Germany, married couples could legally settle their disputes by fighting a Marital Duel. To even the field, the man had to fight from inside a hole with one arm tied behind his back. The woman was free to move and was armed with a sack filled with rocks.

12. Throwing rice at weddings will not cause birds to explode and the myth that it is harmful was probably started by churches and wedding venues who didn’t want to clean it all up and for them to avoid potential slip-and-fall lawsuits.

13. Actors Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter, who played brother and sister on “Dexter” began dating, fell in love, got engaged, got married, and got divorced, all while continuing to play brother and sister on TV.

14. Traditional Samoans valued a bride’s virginity so much that the chief would break her hymen in public so that the entire tribe could see his bloody fingers.

15. Vikings used to give kittens to new brides as an essential part of a new household. Also, cats were considered appropriate since they were associated with Freyja, the goddess of love.

In 1914, Henriette Caillaux, the wife of the French PM assassinated a newspaper editor to prevent him from leaking that she and her husband had been dating while still married to their previous spouses. She was acquitted for ‘uncontrollable female emotions.’

17. US president Cleveland developed a close relationship with his friend’s baby daughter. When his friend died, a court-appointed him to administer her estate, making him closer to the then 11-year-old girl. When she graduated from university at 21, 49-year-old Cleveland married her while he was the President.

18. A wife’s happiness is more important than her husband’s when it comes to keeping a happy, lasting marriage, in a study that surveyed older couples married for an average of 39 years.

19. John Belushi forgot to bring any form of ID to his own wedding. He called a judge, asked him if he watched SNL, and got him to sign an affidavit for the wedding license.

20. The best man’s original purpose was to serve as an accomplice in case the bride needed to be kidnapped from disapproving parents.

“Ring Of Fire” popularized by Johnny Cash was actually written by June Carter about her falling in love with Johnny Cash while he was still married to his first wife.

22. Oktoberfest started off as a wedding reception for a Prince in Bavaria in 1810, and the newlyweds enjoyed it so much, they suggested making it an annual event.

23. In ancient Egypt, couples were considered married whenever they moved in together. Wedding ceremonies were reserved for the upper classes.

24. In 1901, a woman in Spain adopted a male identity and married another woman. The couple was later discovered and had to escape to Argentina. Their marriage certificate was never annulled, so this is the first recorded same-sex marriage in Spain, 100 years before it was legal.

25. A Nazi judge whose job was investigating corruption and irregularities in the SS, discovered a death camp hosting a Jewish wedding, attended by over 1,000 guests, including members of the SS.