Wedding Toasts and Their Checkered History

It’s unthinkable for a wedding not to have the wedding toasts, where the best man or the father of the bride gets to wish the new couple a happy life together. Did you know that the wedding toast didn’t have a good start?

Today, the wedding toast is a joyous part of any wedding celebration but it had a less than stellar beginning as a way for the Greeks to eliminate their opponents. Greeks put poison in their guest’s wine but their compatriots soon discovered this early on. The guests would insist the host drink first, making sure that the wine came from the same bottle.

The Romans also had a similar practice of getting rid of their rivals, but some enterprising man placed extremely burnt toast in his drink to avoid death. The reason? The toast acted as a primitive chemical filter, like activated charcoals are today, to absorb the toxins and bad flavors in the wine. It may have been effective because the practice spread.

The English in the 1800s also had their “loving cup”, a bowl filled with wine that was passed around during religious celebrations as a sign of goodwill from the host. The loving cup had a sweetened toast floating on the surface and the host had the honor of eating it, and drinking last from the cup.

Serving tea, coffee or water were the height of tastelessness as well as being bad luck symbols so they were avoided during wedding toasts.

Wine, on the other hand, was widely accepted as a sign of abundance, vigor and life. It is also suggestive of the auspicious miracles in the wedding at Cana and sharing wine in celebrations meant an intimate gesture of goodwill from the guests to the couple.

Clinking glasses during wedding toasts came from two traditions.

One tradition says that people in the olden days believed wine came with “bad spirits” and to dispel the luck that they would bring, the guests clinked their glasses to create noise. The noise was enough to drive away these malicious spirits and the bad luck that they brought with them.

The other tradition is not as positive. Remember the Greeks’ and the Romans’ propensity to dispose of their enemies with poisoned wines? Stories suggest that guests also made sure their wine glasses weren’t laced with poison so they rubbed them with the host’s glass to transfer whatever poison there may be to his glass. Smart, huh?

Wedding toasts today are all about good cheer, abundance, and life, but it’s also interesting to note that wedding toasts have had a checkered past, too. :)