Todays wedding rituals have some very interesting origins. While some of them have lasted pretty much unchanged, most have evolved greatly from there beginnings. Todays weddings keep most of the traditions alive in one way or another, but rarely do couples even know where they began.
For example, did you know that the wedding band itself was first used by the cave man as a ring of braided grass that was put around the captured bride's ankle or wrist to keep her from getting away?! The first romantic association to the wedding band came from the Greeks and Romans who (mistakenly) believed that an artery ran to this finger
straight from the heart!
Lets continue with the ritual of the wedding band shall we? As I stated the caveman used the braided grass "wedding ring" to keep the captured bride away from her tribe long enough that they would not fight to get her back for fear that she would be with child. This is what we now know as the "romantic" honeymoon.
The "groom" would bring along a group of his friends to aide in the capture of this female, these are the modern day "best man" and "groomsmen".

So now we know that the groom would steal the bride to be from her tribe with the help of his groomsmen and keep her held captive with the wedding band until the honeymoon period was over, Romantic, huh?
Rarely were weddings a romantic event at all. They usually were by capture or arranged with the bride being used as a tool order to combine 2 high ranking tribes. Sometime the bride was bartered for livestock or other highly coveted goods. This was what lead to the later "dowry" that would be offered in exchange for the hand of the bride. The tradition of asking for the father's permission to ask for his daughter's hand in marraige is all we have left coming from this ancient tradition, nice huh? `Jill