What is the significance of throwing rice on a newly married couple as they walk to their car to leave?
-M
ps. I tried to search the archives but the page kept on telling me it wasn’t responding. Anyone else get this often, too?
This doesn’t answer your question, but Cecil speaks on the topic of rice and weddings.
Google is your friend.
Throwing bricks just didn’t seem polite.
Rice is a symbol of fertility, so you’re visually wishing for children for the happy couple. There’s a joke about pregnant brides and instant rice, but I don’t remember just how it goes.
Bird seed has become popular. Birds, naturally, clean up the mess pretty quickly.
I symbolize my wish that you newlyweds have a good marriage by pelting you with animal food! Let me toss some horse fodder and kibbles and bits for good measure! And here, let me smear some ground beef on you! (It’s good for the feral dogs, they lick the church steps clean like spanking new!)
Peace.
Watch the corneas.
I think in England it used to be wheat. At any rate, grains are symbols of fertility and of plenty, so pelting the newlyweds with grains has a double meaning: that they should never know want, and that they be fertile.
This was a PETA recommendation. Check their web site.
Don’t need to check the web site of raging lunatics. Their endorsement of the practice should tell you everything you need to know about it.
from the Master’s column liked above
And just how would this be an improvement?
Well, there for a while, there was an urban legend going around that if you threw rice, the birds would eat it, and it would soften and expand in their little stomachs, and they’d explode. Ridiculous, yes, but I can’t tell you how many times it was repeated to me as an honest-to-goodness bit of scientific knowlege. Bird seed, of course, is safe for the birds, which is why it’s become popular.
Heh, and I thought I could stamp out all the bird exploding nonsense with one simple link to Cecil.
Since CelraySoda hasn’t reappeared, let me remind everyone that the OP was in regard to the significance which has been briefly addressed: symbol of fertility. But I think the question of origin is implied.
Anybody?
In the Indian culture rice is seen as a symbol of wealth and prosperity. As the bride leaves the place where the wedding ceremony happened, she throws rice, provided by her parents behind her, signifying that she is leaving behind her parents and all their wealth for a new life with her husband.
Just an alternative perspective on the rice throwing thing.
Yo, I’m with you on that one. I surely wasn’t endorsing anything those, as you say, lunatics say. Just puttin’ my two cents in. Sorry if I got your juices flowing. 
Umm, rice is a seed and birds eat it. I don’t get the distinction.
See CRAZYCATLADY post, above.
…and personally, all weddings should be in the winter so you could throw snowballs…
Hey, if you use corn on the cob, you can get the phallic thing in there too. Just don’t aim for their heads.
Fertility yes, but I always understood that a spray of rice was supposed to symbolize a spray of sperm. No, I cannot give a cite; this was just a common supposition.
And I don’t believe for a minute the BS about explding birds.
Common? I don’t think so.
RR
P.S.: “Exploding Birds” = rock band!