14. This Is Sparta!

From choosing the perfect dress to spending the whole wedding morning in the beauty salon, brides do anything to appear perfectly dressed for their special day. Let’s say that the wedding day of our Sparta ancestors was a bit different. Same-sex relationships were common in Sparta since men and women would only have the company of people from the same gender during school years.

Spartan women were required to have children after getting married, so it was necessary to have heterosexual relationships. Since men were used to homosexuality, the idea of the ritual wedding day was to help ease the groom into heterosexuality. So, for that, the bride would imitate men by shaving her hair and wearing men’s clothes and sandals while waiting for the groom in a dark room for their first night together.