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“Handfasting,” the ancient word for a wedding, was traditionally recognized as a binding contract of marriage between a man and a woman before weddings became a legal function of the government or a papal responsibility of the church. After the wedding vows and ring exchange, the couple’s hands were bound together with a cord that was tied in a “love knot,” signifying the joining of their lives in a sacred union.
Each of the cord colors has its own special symbolic meaning. The cords can either be several colors twisted into one cord and used for a single cord ceremony, or each color can be draped individually up to six cords. Each cord should be at least 48″ (4 ft.) long, so the ends can all be tied together. For more than two or three colors, ribbon usually works better than cord or rope.
village, so couples learned to make allowances. A handfasting was the equivalent of today’s common-law marriage — a man and woman simply clasped hands and declared themselves married. Generally this was done in the presence of a witness or witnesses. In Scotland, marriages were considered the office of the church until 1560, when marriage became a civil matter rather than a church sacrament. After that time, marriages were divided into “regular” and “irregular” marriages.
We don’t know a lot about the rules in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest, but the betrothal ceremony seems to have been marked by the happy couple joining hands. It seems that in Northern England and Scotland, handfasting marked a first stage of marriage, a temporary contract that lasted a year and a day. If at the end of that time no child had been born and the couple didn’t want to continue, the betrothal lapsed.