Persian Wedding Toasts: Cheers, Speeches, and Customs

Who speaks, and when

• The ceremony is at the sofreh aghd, a spread of symbolic items, and the officiant asks the bride three times if she consents. She answers only the third time, after guests call out that she has gone to pick flowers.
• At the reception, parents and close friends may toast. Speeches are shorter than in the West, and the dancing and the dinner are the center.
• Elders bless the couple with 'mobarak bashe' and the room answers.

How long

A toast is a minute. The sofreh ceremony is the long, beautiful part, and the reception is for dancing.

What you’ll see

• The sofreh aghd: a cloth laid with a mirror, candles, honey, bread, eggs, herbs, a book of poetry, and more, each meaning something for the marriage.
• During the ceremony, married women hold a cloth over the couple and rub two sugar cones together over it, to sweeten the marriage.
• The couple feeds each other honey from a fingertip.
• The bride is asked three times; the first two times the guests say 'the bride has gone to pick flowers,' and she says yes on the third.
• Persian dancing, with hands and shoulders, and the knife dance, where the cake knife is danced away from the couple and must be bought back.

If you’re the guest from somewhere else

• Say 'mobarak bashe' to the couple and their parents.
• At the cake, the knife will be danced away. Someone will ask the groom for money. It is a game.
• Expect wonderful food and a late finish.

A toast you could give

Short, warm, specific to the couple, and ending on the phrase. Swap in your own names and your own detail; the shape is what matters.

Sara, you taught me that no table is finished until there is tea, and I have never been happier at a table than at yours. Reza, you are at the best one now. Mobarak bashe. Be salamati!