To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this article may need to be rewritten. Reason: Several sections on international wedding customs have been translated or written by non-native English speakers, and need to be checked for proper English grammar and citations. Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008) For other uses, see Wedding (disambiguation).

Preparing for the photographs, at a wedding at Thornbury Castle, England A wedding is a ceremony that celebrates the beginning of a marriage or civil union. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. In some countries, cultures and religions, the actual act of marriage begins during the wedding ceremony. In others, the legal act of marriage occurs at the time of signing a marriage license or other legal document, and the wedding is then an opportunity to perform a traditional ceremony and celebrate with friends and family. A woman being married is called a bride, a man called a bridegroom, and after the ceremony they become a wife or a husband, respectively. Nuptial is the adjective of "wedding". It is used for example in zoology to denote plumage, coloration, behavior, etc related to or occurring in the mating season.