Is the start of your summer filled with nothing but weddings? There’s a long history explaining why so many fall in this month. Most of it stems from ancient Roman times and is tied to nature’s seasonal cycles. With mankind being agrarian for most of human history there are some traditions that are just harder to break, even if we get our food from Whole Foods now. Here’s a list of a few possible explanations.
- Juno: for whom the month of June was named, is the Roman goddess of marriage and childbirth. She’s a feminine icon and it was considered favorable to marry during June in honor of her.
- Party All Night Long! June is the month with the longest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, which is great if you’re going to throw a party.
- Farming: June is the first harvestable food, which could be served fresh at a feast. Spring is when families would till and sow their fields, meaning farms needed all hands on deck. During the winter no one wanted to travel when it was cold out (sorta like today), plus food sources were rationed making it harder to throw a wedding feast. In the fall, farmers needed everyone to bring in the crops.
- Fresh n’ Clean: May was the month when ancient people had their one bath a year, meaning everyone was smelling fresh in June. If they somehow forgot to wash adequately under their armpits then there were plenty of June flowers to mask the smell.
- Baby on Board: A June weddings set the preferred conception timeline. If the bride became pregnant after her June wedding, she would not give birth until late spring/early summer. This was strategically ideal, as she could still work the fields during the most important seasons. Babies born in warmer months would also be more likely to survive future winters.
- For Luck, Not Love: Most marriage were arranged for financial, asset and power purposes. All the reasons listed above came with a lot of accompanying superstition, i.e. what’s lucky verses unlucky, so families and wedding parties gravitated towards whatever their society deemed auspicious to promote fertility and general prosperity.