Bride & Groom Trivia
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155 free Bride & Groom trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This bride and groom trivia quiz is built for the wedding crowd: showers, rehearsal dinners, hen and stag nights, the long table at the reception, or the couple themselves. Every question is about the customs a bride and groom actually go through, and where each one came from: the engagement ring, the white dress, the veil, the vows, the best man, the bridesmaids, the bouquet and garter toss, the cake, the honeymoon and the anniversary gifts. If you want a broader quiz on marriage and famous weddings, our weddings trivia page covers that. The easy questions are the ones everybody at the table can shout: which finger the ring goes on, what a groom's attendants are called, what a British bride wears that an American calls a pacifier of a different kind. Then it gets into the good stuff: why the best man stands on the groom's right, which queen made white dresses fashionable, when 'a diamond is forever' was coined, why Gretna Green had blacksmith priests, and which royal cake was the first one you could actually eat all of. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for the tradition before publishing, and the sentence that supports it is stored with each question.
30 of 155 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where is a wedding band traditionally worn in Western culture?
Fourth digit, left side
Fourth digit, left side: the first English prayer book told the groom to put the ring 'upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand', and the custom stuck.
Q 02What is the Latin name of the mythical vein said to run from the ring finger to the heart?
Vena amoris
Vena amoris, 'vein of love': the idea is ancient, but the Roman writers who passed it on credited Egyptian anatomists and described a fine nerve, not a vein, running from that finger to the heart.
Q 03Which 17th-century physician's account of blood circulation left no room for a special vein from the ring finger?
William Harvey
William Harvey: his 1628 book De Motu Cordis showed the heart pumps blood around the body in a loop, so every vein leads back to it and the ring finger's is nothing special.
Q 04Which company's marketing campaign made diamonds synonymous with engagement rings?
De Beers
De Beers: its adverts, launched in 1939, tied the gem to romance so firmly that the share of engagement rings set with one climbed from about one in ten to eight in ten by the century's end.
Q 05Which word completes the 1947 engagement-ring slogan written by copywriter Frances Gerety, 'A Diamond Is…'?
Forever
Forever: Gerety scribbled the line late one night before bed and thought it merely O.K., yet it ran in the adverts for decades and Advertising Age later named it the slogan of the century.
Q 06The word 'matrimony' comes from the Latin for which family member?
Mother
Mother: Latin matrimonium was built on mater, 'mother', while its twin patrimonium, built on pater, 'father', gave English 'patrimony', which means an inheritance and has nothing to do with weddings.
Q 07How many months' salary did 1980s American diamond adverts say an engagement ring should cost?
Two
Two months: the rule came from the adverts themselves, not from custom, and it shifted with the market, to one month's pay in Britain and three in Japan.
Q 08On an Irish Claddagh ring, often used as a wedding band, two hands hold a heart topped with what?
A crown
A crown: the hands stand for friendship, the heart for love and the crown for loyalty, and the ring is named after the Claddagh, the Galway district where the design began.
Q 09Jewellers grade a diamond by the 'four Cs': cut, colour, clarity and which other quality?
Carat
Carat: the stone's weight, measured in a unit whose name goes back through Arabic to the Greek for a carob bean, itself once used as a small weight.
Q 10In which two Nordic countries do brides wear engagement and wedding rings together on the left hand?
Sweden and Finland
Sweden and Finland: there both partners exchange plain engagement bands, and at the wedding the bride adds a second ring on the same left-hand finger.
Q 11On which hand and finger is a wedding ring traditionally worn in the Eastern Orthodox Church?
Ring finger, right hand
Ring finger, right hand: the priest places the rings there in the betrothal rite, and Greek couples who wore their bands on the left while engaged switch them across at the wedding.
Q 12In Western tradition, a man traditionally asks whom for permission before proposing?
Her father
Her father: the old prayer-book service still asks 'Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?', though asking his blessing before a proposal is now mostly a courtesy.
Q 13Folk tradition in Scotland, Ireland and Finland lets women propose on which day?
A leap day
Q 21In South Asian weddings, the mehndi patterns painted on a bride's hands are made with a paste of which plant dye?
Henna
Henna: the paste dries on the skin and leaves a reddish-brown stain, and the names or initials of the bride and groom are often hidden in the pattern.
Q 22Chinese and Indian brides traditionally wear which colour for luck?
Red
Red: both cultures count it the auspicious colour, and for a Hindu bride it outlasts the day, since the groom marks her hair parting with red sindoor powder, the sign of a married woman.
Q 23What was the colour of the flammeum, the veil worn by Roman brides?
Deep yellow
Deep yellow: Roman writers call the flammeum flame-coloured and describe a bright yellow dye, though some modern accounts picture the veil nearer orange-red.
A leap day, 29 February: Irish legend has St Brigid winning the concession from St Patrick, and in parts of Europe a man who said no owed the woman twelve pairs of gloves.
Q 14Which birds do some couples release into the sky at their wedding?
Doves
Doves: the birds released are usually homing pigeons, close kin that fly straight back to their loft, because the doves sold as pets lack the homing instinct and would not survive.
Q 15Who did the proposing when Britain's young monarch got engaged in October 1839?
The bride, the reigning queen
The bride, the reigning queen: since no one could propose to a monarch, Victoria asked Albert herself on 15 October 1839, five days after he arrived at Windsor.
Q 16How did Princess Elizabeth, the future queen, pay for the material of her 1947 wedding dress?
With clothing ration coupons
With clothing ration coupons: two years after the war Britain still rationed clothes, so even the heir to the throne had to hand over coupons for Norman Hartnell's satin gown.
Q 17Queen Victoria's wedding dress was trimmed with handmade lace named after which English town?
Honiton
Honiton: the lace was in fact worked in the nearby village of Beer, and Victoria chose it over fashionable Brussels lace to support the English cottage industry.
Q 18What did Queen Victoria wear on her head instead of a tiara at her wedding?
A wreath of orange blossoms
A wreath of orange blossoms: the flowers, an emblem of fertility, also trimmed her dress, and wearing them in place of a tiara is often read as Victoria choosing to look a bride rather than a queen.
Q 19Before their wedding, Prince Albert was already related to Queen Victoria as her what?
First cousin
First cousin: the match was promoted by Leopold, King of the Belgians, who was uncle to both of them, and Albert was 20 when they married.
Q 20The first documented royal bride to wear white was Philippa of England, in which year?
1406
1406: Philippa, daughter of Henry IV, married Eric of Pomerania at Lund that year in a tunic of white silk bordered with grey squirrel and ermine.
Q 24The Latin verb nubere, 'to marry', has long been linked to the bridal veil and to nubes, the word for what?
Cloud
Cloud: on the old theory a Roman bride 'clouded' herself with her veil, a link modern etymologists call attractive but unproven; nubere also gave English 'nuptial'.
Q 25According to old custom, a bride's veil was believed to protect her from what?
Evil spirits
Evil spirits: the veil was meant to hide a bride's beauty from jealous spirits and, in some tellings, from rivals who might carry her off before she was safely married.
Q 26By a custom dating back to ancient Rome, what does a groom traditionally carry his bride over?
The threshold
The threshold: Plutarch describes Roman brides being lifted over it by their escorts, not the groom, and Roman writers themselves could not agree why, one calling a step on the doorstep a bad omen.
Q 27What title does a married chief bridesmaid traditionally take?
Matron of honour
Matron of honour: 'matron' marks a married woman, and 'maid of honour' was itself borrowed from court, where it meant an unmarried lady attending a queen.
Q 28What colour did Queen Victoria's bridesmaids wear at her wedding?
White
White: Victoria designed her bridesmaids' dresses herself, so the young women who carried her train matched her own gown.
Q 29The best man is usually picked from which group?
The ushers
Groomsmen and ushers are the same attendants; the best man stands beside and slightly behind the groom.
Q 30At a military officer's wedding, the couple traditionally leave beneath an arch formed by fellow officers holding what?
Swords
Swords: in the American custom the last pair of officers lower their sabres to bar the couple's way for a moment, and one then gives the bride a gentle swat with the blade to welcome her to the service.