Colours of weddings and marriage

A Bengali Muslim bride usually marries in a red sari, often a Benarasi or a Jamdani, with gold jewellery.

Red stands for good fortune and happiness. Brides traditionally wear it, doors are hung with red couplets at New Year, and gifts of money come in red envelopes.

Many Hindu brides marry in a red sari or lehenga. In much of north India a married woman wears sindoor, a red powder, along the parting of her hair.

Married Hindu women wear red saris, red glass bangles and strings of red or green pote beads. At the Teej festival they dress in red, fast, sing and dance, and pray for their husbands' long lives.

Brides most often marry in red, usually a heavily embroidered lehenga or gharara. The night before, the mehndi ceremony stains their hands with deep red-brown henna.

Turkmen carpets are woven in deep reds with repeated medallions called gul. A bride's dress is traditionally red too, worn with heavy silver jewellery.

Coral beads, in shades from orange to deep red, are the regalia of the Oba of Benin and his chiefs. Edo brides wear a crown and collars of coral.

At the gaye holud, held a day or two before a wedding, relatives rub turmeric paste on the bride and groom. Guests dress in yellow and orange.

People wear yellow for Vasant Panchami, the spring festival of the goddess Saraswati. Before many weddings, turmeric paste is rubbed on the bride and groom in the haldi ceremony.

Masi is bark cloth beaten from paper mulberry and printed in brown and black. It is worn at weddings and funerals and given in ceremonial exchanges.

Queen Victoria married in white silk and lace in 1840. Prints of the dress spread widely, and white became the usual colour for brides across the West.

A bride at a Shinto wedding may wear the shiromuku, a kimono that is white from head to foot. White is also the colour of the paper streamers that mark sacred places.

Dubai is called the City of Gold for its gold souk, a market of hundreds of jewellers. Much of what is sold is bridal jewellery for South Asian and Arab families.

Gold jewellery is bought on Dhanteras and Akshaya Tritiya, two days held to be lucky for it. A bride's gold is both ornament and her own store of wealth.