What is a Loving Cup ceremony?
The Loving Cup dates back to Saxon Britain and is used in many ceremonies, in particular at weddings as a symbolic ritual for the couple to toast their new life together.
A loving cup can be used in a wedding ceremony as part of a wine ritual or with whisky as part of the ancient Scottish Quaich tradition.
A Loving Cup traditionally had two handles, but modern varieties often don’t and are made from crystal glass or silver and is either engraved with the couple’s names and wedding date, or it is a family heirloom, passed down the generations.
The Loving Cup represents the cup of life, filled with the future possibilities of the happy couple. If wine is used, it will contain sweet properties that represent happiness, joy, peace and hope. The wine will also contain bitter properties symbolising the sorrow, grief and despair that will at some point arrive in life’s journey. By drinking from the same cup it symbolises the couple’s commitment to share the happiness and burdens of marriage together.
Alternatively, in a wine unity ceremony, different wines can be chosen by each fiancé for their partner and they are then blended together in the same cup and shared.
If whisky is used in the Loving Cup, the same symbolism of sweet and bitter properties hold. Likewise, the couple can choose for each other a single malt whisky to blend in the Loving Cup and share. The Loving Cup ceremony works well either with a single drink or as a unity ritual with two. However, personally speaking, I wouldn’t want to guarantee the quality of a blended wine, but a blended whisky to all but the most experienced connoisseur, will be drinkable.
As the couple have shared wine or whisky from the loving cup, they will likewise go on to share life’s mysteries. It is a fabulous celebratory ending to the wedding ceremony to wish their life’s joys to be heightened, life’s bitterness to be sweetened and their life to be enhanced by family and friends.
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