For Better or Worse

1 ANSWERS

1. Saba
   

   Princess Maria del Pozzo della Cisterno was unlikely ever to forget the day of her wedding to Amadeo, the Duke D’Aosta, son of the King of Italy, in Turin in 1867. Her wardrobe mistress hung herself; palace gatekeeper cut his throat; the colonel leading the wedding procession collapsed from sunstroke; the stationmaster was crushed to death under the wheels of the honeymoon train; the king’s aide was killed when falling from his horse; and the best man shot himself. After all that, even the cake was in tiers.
   
   A French bride was arrested at her wedding reception in 1995 for stabbing her new husband with the knife they had just used to cut the wedding cake.
   
   The term “best man” dates back to the times when Scotsmen kidnapped their future brides. The friend of the groom who had excelled at the abduction was acclaimed to be the best man.
   
   All of Henry VIII’s wives were related to each other.
   
   Between 1949 and 1981, one man notched up 104 bigamous marriages in 15 countries. The bigamist – who used so many aliases that nobody knew what to charge his as - was finally brought to justice in 1983 and sentenced to 34 years in jail. He died in 1991.
   
   Every day, 26,000 couples get married in China.
   
   A Mexico City couple got married in 1969 after an engagement lasting 67 years. Both were 82 when they finally took the plunge.
   
   Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was too ill to attend his own wedding. So for the 1853 ceremony to Marie Henrietta, the Austrian Emperor’s brother, the Archduke Charles, stood in for him.
   Casanova found it hard to keep track of his many lovers. He asked for the hand of a pretty girl named Leonilda, but her mother screamed and fainted when introduced to her future son-in-law. For she was one of Casanova’s conquests, who had borne his child 17 years earlier. Casanova had been about to marry his own daughter.
   
   Philip I Augustus, King of France, decided half-way through his wedding ceremony that he didn’t really like his Danish bride Ingeborg after all. So immediately afterwards he had her locked away in a nunnery where she languished for years.
   
   A man in Malaysia has been best man at around 1000 weddings.
   
   Prior to the 20th century, Egyptian men preferred not to deflower their brides personally. Instead thy hired a servant to undertake the chore.
   
   6ft 2in tall Fabien Pretou towered over his 3ft 1in tall bride Natalie Lucius at their wedding in France in 1990.
   
   In 1976 Los Angeles secretary Jannene Swift officially married a 50lb rock. The ceremony was witnessed by more than 20 people.
   
   When ever movie star Joan Crawford changed husbands, she changed all the toilet seats in the house.
   
   Saudi Arabian women literally have grounds for divorce. They can obtain a separation if their husband doesn’t give them coffee.
   
   In Anglo Saxon times, a man could divorce his wife on the grounds that she was too passionate.
   
   Harry Bidwell of Brighton was 101when he was divorced from his 65-year-old wife in 1980.
   
   A bride-to-be in Crete suffered a nervous breakdown on the night before her wedding after discovering the groom, wearing her wedding dress, locked in a passionate embrace with the best man, Not surprisingly, the wedding was cancelled.
   
   Impotence is grounds for divorce in 24 states in the US.
   
   George IV got himself so drunk on the day of his wedding to Caroline of Brunswick that he had to be carried to the altar. That night, he fell asleep in the fireplace.
   
   Movie star Eva Bartok said that none of her first three marriages was consummated. At 15 she was briefly married to an SS officer in Hungary. Then she entered into a marriage of convenience with film producer Alexander Paal so that she could get out of Hungary. And the third was to film publicist William Wordsworth, a descendant of the poet. They split up at the wedding ceremony.
   
   The people of the Czech Republic throw peas at weddings instead of rice. And Italians throw sugared almonds.
   
   The wedding tradition in Greece is to write the names of all the bride’s unmarried female friends and relatives on the sole of her shoe. After the wedding, the shoe is examined and those whose names have been worn off are said to be next in line for a journey up the aisle.
   
   Best man Albert Muldoon found himself married to the bride following a mix-up at a church in Ireland in the 1920s. Muldoon walked up to the altar with the groom but, instead of standing to the right of the groom, he stood on his left. Seeing Muldoon in that position, the priest addressed all of the questions to him, and Muldoon duly replied. The slip-up was only discovered when the real groom demanded to sign the register too. A second ceremony was swiftly arranged.

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