Wedding Crowns

Part of Culture of Juhnvechteya
Wedding crowns are an item of traditional Joran headwear, worn by the bride and groom on the day of their wedding. Each fanri church has a pair, one of gold and one of silver. These crowns are considered to be that which makes a chapel a farni church, alongside the resident Farar. 
The crowns are housed in a wicker box near the altar, and are kept under lock and key by the farar. They are only brought out on wedding days for the ceremony, and once every decade for maintenance. 
During the ceremony, the groom will wear the silver crown while the bride will wear the gold. The donning of the crowns, conducted by both the priest and a local magnate, symbolizes the final act of the marriage process. From this point, the couple is considered officially wed, and they will wear the crowns for the duration of the wedding celebration, which typically lasts from midday until the following dawn. 
The crowns represent an extremely valuable, and easily portable, item. This causes them to be the first items stolen from a church during a village’s sacking. As typically the only items made of gold and silver in the vicinity of the area, bandits and soldiers prefer to take them. As such, they are often hidden in purpose-designed alcoves within a church’s walls whenever an army is nearby, where they will be sealed by stone for the duration of the threat’s presence. 
When not adequately hidden, wedding crowns are often melted down by soldiers into more easily transported items such as coins, or are otherwise either sold or ransomed back to the community they were taken from. The later often serves as a source of revenue for commanders during war, as a town must have a farni church, and a farni church must have wedding crowns. Thus the ransoms for crowns may be far in excess of their actual worth, as they are symbols of the community and its history (some crowns are centuries old, and some have been present since the Kingdom).
Category:Culture of Juhnvechteya