Backup Material for Research on Wedding Ceremonies

This page contains a collection of references and summary information regarding wedding ceremonies in various cultures throughout history, with particular emphasis on ritual elements that are reflected in my own marriage initiation ritual (hereafter called "MMIR").

Non-Aisle Format

The most obvious difference between MMIR and most weddings of English-speaking people is that MMIR places the guests in concentric circles around the wedding party, which in turn surrounds the couple being wed and the officiant. There are several documented examples of ceremony designs involving something like this arrangement:

Some elements of ceremonies in Argentina

Major Religions

For completeness, here is a chart of wedding ceremony physical layouts by type of religious practice, for the religious practices with the most adherents according to Wikipedia's Major religious groups article. A few entries such as "Folk religion" are not included because the practices of people in those categories are not sufficiently coherent to permit an accurate answer to the question. In cases where the number of adherents is given as a range ("50-100") the geometric mean (71) is used.

Major Religions, descending by number of adherents

Religion	Adherents (2020)	Guest Arrangement
Christianity	2.3 billion	aisle
Islam	2.0 billion	none, or partitioned¹
Hinduism	1.2 billion	aisle
Buddhism	300 million	aisle
Shinto	89 million	few²
Yoruba	71 million	aisle
Taoism	43 million	none, or circular³
Sikhism	27 million	aisle/partitioned
Judaism	14.7 million	aisle
Spiritism	8.6 million	no ceremony
Baha'i	6 million	none

footnotes

1 : The legal initiation of married status is accomplished by the Nikah, which often involves only the bride, groom, wali (typically father of the bride), and two or three witnesses. If guests are present, they are typically seated in separate sections (male and female) as in a mosque, in which case the "aisle" format is most common.

2 : The legal initiation of married status is accomplished by the shrine ceremony in which only a small number of close family would be considered "guests", all of whom face the front.

3 : By its nature, traditional Taoism does not involve itself in marriage. There is some evidence of the use of a circular arrangement of guests surrounding the couple, but more evidence of the use of other types of ceremony derived from non-Taoist traditions.

This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2025 Aug 31.

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