My informant for this story is my friend’s grandmother.

As I mentioned in another post, my best friend got married last year.  Prior to that experience, in which I served as best man, my experience with weddings was very limited, so I did not know much about them or what went on at them or any superstitions surrounding them.  One such thing about which I had never previously heard was a piece of folklore that warned against the bride wearing pearls on her wedding day.  I asked my informant what the reasons for this lesson was and she was unsure of its origin or exactly what it meant.  All she knew was that everyone in her family had always said it to any brides in on close to the family and they all said that wearing pearls on your wedding day would bring tears, presumably in the marriage.

I don’t think my friend’s wife ever planned to wear pearls at the wedding, but I am sure that if she had thought about doing so, the convictions with which her husband’s grandmother warned against wearing pearls, she would have chosen not to.  This, in my opinion, is a good example of a piece of folklore or superstition that has an unknown or little known origin that despite that fact, guides the decisions of people that have heard it so often.