Websites and Local Area Marketing
A website itself is an important below the-line marketing tool and it can be constructed at a low price and have an immediate impact on your organization. Your franchisor or corporation most likely boasts a company-wide website, which makes a lot of sense, so that the detail and cost can be spread across the entire organisation. The website should be a two-way medium that places you in touch with your target customers and explains in detail your offerings and how to contact your organisation. It should gather and distribute leads and should collect prospect details so that you can construct a database of potential clients.
Websites have the capability to reach world-wide audiences, which takes you out of your local area! Regardless, websites can also be tailored in such a way that if someone does a search for your products in your area, you can be found.
This is crucial because more and more people are going to the Internet first before reaching for the Yellow Pages. A professionally produced and presented website can establish the credibility of your company regardless if you are working out of a one-bedroom apartment or an expensive office block.
Your website can answer the same questions over and over and over again whilst you sleep and can extend the life of your printed material, radio and television advertisements by incorporating them on the site. You can introduce forms and gather information as you want and provide your clients with valuable reports while collecting their details for your prospect database. The site can also be another cost-effective retail outlet for you without the cost of hard real estate.
Believe it or not, reclusive people not willing to contact you directly by phone are able to obtain information and if they wish to pursue things further, they will often email you via the contacts section of the website.
There is a lot written about websites about how they should be made and what they should say. Suffice to say that the content you display on your website is imperative because it has the potential to become the foundation for enticing clients to your site and positioning your company as the leader in its field. By regularly updating the content on your site, you can also attract search engines and, if the content is worthy, other businesses will build inbound links to your site.
There is some debate as to how many pages should constitute your website ranging from one simple tellall/sell-all page to adding as much content as you like. Regardless, it’s crucial to know that the heading or first line of the web page is the most important and the next in line is the first paragraph. Why is this so? Well, a web page is like a newspaper in that people will scan for headlines before either finding something they like or moving on to the next page. Keep the reader engaged with clear, concise. and confronting headlines and strong first paragraphs.
Web pages are one of the most easily tracked marketing techniques available. In fact, you can obtain an astounding amount of statistics from hits through to hot spots within a page. Websites are also great for companies that can’t find enough room on their business cards to explain their products and services!
It’s one thing to have a great website; it’s an absolutely different thing to have one that can be found.
For internet marketing Brisbane, Brisbane web design and SEO services Brisbane, contact Search Tempo today.
Sphere: Related ContentOil Paints and Painting
Artists’ oil colours are made by adding dry powder pigments with selected refined linseed oil until the substance reaches a stiff paste consistency and then grinding it with strong friction in steel roller mills. The smoothness of the hue is important. The common standard is a smooth, buttery paste, not stringy or long or tacky. When a transient or mobile quality is desired by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine must be added with the concoction. If the artist needs to expediate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, could be occasionally used.
First-grade brushes are manufactured in two styles: red sable (hair from different members of weasel) and whitened hog bristles. Both can be acquired in numbered sizes for each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat, bright (flat shape but shorter and not as supple), and oval (flat but is bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are generally chosen for a smoother, more delicate kind of brushstroke. The painting knife, a declicately tempered, skinny version of an palette knife, is a common utensil for using oil colours in a robust manner.
The usual support for oil painting is a canvas made of pure European linen of strong close weave. The canvas is cut to the required size and cast over a frame, generally a wood frame, and secured with tacks or, in the 20th century, by use of staples. If the artist desires to lessen the absorbency of the fabric itself and to create a smooth surface, a primer or ground should be applied and left to dry first. The most typically employed primers for this have been gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If stiffness and a smooth consistency are preferred rather than springiness and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, has to be employed. A number of other supports, such as paper and certain textiles and metals, also have been tried out.
A layer of paint varnish is usually given to a completed oil painting to prevent any atmospheric attacks, minor abrasions, or an injurious accumulation of dirt. This film of picture varnish could be taken off safely by experts with isopropyl alcohol and other such household solvents. The varnish film also takes the surface to a consistent lustre and takes the tone and colour intensity really to the look originally seen by the artist in the wet paint. Some painters, especially those who don’t favour deep, intense colouring, and prefer a mat, or lustreless, finish in oil paintings.
The majority of oil paintings dating before the 19th century were created in layers. The first would be a blank, uniform field of thin paint known as a ground. The ground subdued the glaring white of the primer and established a gentle colour on which to apply the paint. The forms and objects in the painting would be roughly blocked in from shades of white, as well as gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The resulting mass of monochromatic light and dark shades were termed the underpainting. Forms could be defined using either ordinary paint or scumbles; non-uniform, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that creates a lot of effects. For the last stage, transparent layers of pure colour called glazes could then be applied to display luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the shapes, and highlights were then effected with thick, textured patches of paint called impastos.
Oil as a medium for painting is dated circa the 11th century. The technique of easel painting with oil colours, however, stems directly from 15th-century tempera-painting techniques. Simple improvements in refining linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents after 1400 coincided with a requirement for a medium other than pure egg-yolk tempera, in meeting the developing requirements of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). Initially, oil paints and varnishes were employed to glaze tempera panels that were painted from their usual linear draftsmanship. The technically brilliant, jewel-like paintings of the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were perfected in this new technique.
During the 16th century, oils emerged as the fundamental painting material in Venice. By the end of the century, Venetian painters had grown proficient in the exploitation of the fundamental aspects of oil painting, notably in their application of successive layers of glazing. Linen canvas, after a long era of development, topped wood panelling as the common support.
One of the 17th-century masters of the oil technique was Velázquez, a Spanish artist in the Venetian tradition, whose highly economical but informative brushstrokes have often been repeated, notably in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens challenged the norm in the style in which he loaded the light colours opaquely, to juxtapose the thin, transparent darks and shadows. The third remarkable 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt. In his work, a single brushstroke could effectively depict form; cumulative strokes created great textural depth, with a combination of the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A system of loaded whites and transparent darks would be further enhanced by glazing, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Other particular influences on the later techniques of easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately planned, tight styles. A great many admired works (e.g., such as from Johannes Vermeer) were created with smooth gradations and blends of tones to create shadowed forms and delicate colour variations.
The technical requirements of some schools of modern painting cannot be realized by use of traditional genres and/or techniques, however, and some abstract painters - and some contemporary traditional painters - have expressed a need for a totally different plastic flow or viscosity that cannot be had with oil paint and its conventional additives. Some need a wider variation of thick or thin applications and a faster rate of drying. Some artists mixed coarsely grained substances with the colours to create new textures, some apply oil paints in heavier thicknesses than is usual, and a large part have begun to use acrylic paints, which are more versatile and dry rapidly.
Interested in oil painting? For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse.
Sphere: Related ContentWhat are Hydrocarbons?
Hydrocarbons are any of a class of organic chemical compounds formed purely of the elements carbon and hydrogen. The carbon atoms link together to form the framework of the compound; the hydrogen atoms link to them in a number of different configurations. Hydrocarbons are the elemental constituents of petroleum and natural gas. They might serve as fuels and lubricants as well as raw materials for the production of plastics, fibres, rubbers, solvents, explosives, and industrial chemicals.
Lots of hydrocarbons occur in nature. As well as forming fossil fuels, hydrocarbons are seen in trees or some plants, such as, for example, in the type of pigments known as carotenes that are found in carrots and green leaves. A little more than 98 percent of natural crude rubber is a part of hydrocarbon polymer, a chainlike molecule formed of several units connected together.
Hydrocarbons will not dissolve in water and they are less dense than water, so they should float on the surface. They are generally soluble within one another, though, as well as with certain organic solvents. All hydrocarbons will be combustible. If they are burned totally with an adequate amount of oxygen, they produce carbon dioxide and water, releasing heat. If there is insufficent oxygen, the combustion yields mainly carbon monoxide.
The structures and chemistry of unique hydrocarbons depends mostly on the kind of chemical bonds that combine the atoms of their constituent molecules. A carbon atom might form four single bonds, or it can possess double or triple bonds. A hydrogen atom may feature just a single bond.
Hydrocarbons are categorized into a number of classes based on their structure. The two primary categories are aliphatic and aromatic. Aliphatic hydrocarbons could be created out of molecules in which the carbon atoms are connected in chains (known as acyclic) or in rings (known as alicyclic, or carbocyclic). Aliphatic hydrocarbons will be divided according to the types of bonds between the carbon atoms. When every bond is single (known as sigma bonds), the compound is classified as saturated. Such compounds are classified as alkanes or cycloalkanes. If at least two bonds link any two carbon atoms, the hydrocarbon is known as unsaturated. The bonds might be double, like for the alkenes or alkadienes, or triple, as in the alkynes. A few compounds contain both kinds of multiple bonds within the same molecule.
The basic alkanes are methane, ethane , and propane. Those three compounds exist in just an individual structure of each. Higher types of the series, like butane, might be constructed in two differing methods, according to whether the carbon chain is straight or branched. Those compounds are known as isomers; they are compounds that have a matching molecular formula but then have differing arrangements of the atoms. The result is, they can frequently have differing chemical properties.
Cycloalkanes are ring structures with two fewer hydrogen atoms within the molecule of the corresponding alkane. Many possess not just one ring, but many. Six-membered rings are of particular interest as they occur in numerous natural products, notably the steroids. Cyclic structures can also be isomers in the case that two molecules vary solely in the spatial arrangement of substituent groups.
The key commercial sources of alkanes include petroleum and natural gas. Individual higher alkanes and cycloalkanes commonly are synthesized with reactions designed for a particular product. These saturated hydrocarbons might also be synthesized by a relative unsaturated molecules, with hydrogenation (including of hydrogen). Saturated hydrocarbons are mostly inert; i.e., at room temperature they aren’t affected by normal acids, alkalies, and oxidizing or reducing agents.
For hydrocarbon storage tanks and self-bundled hydrocarbon tanks, contact Logitank.com.au
Sphere: Related ContentTen Good Reasons to Consider Synthetic Grass
Gone are the days of synthetic grass looking phony and plastic. These days new generation synthetic lawn is lush, soft, extremely realistic and difficult to tell apart from the real thing.
Everyone likes the natural look of a lawn, but who has the time these days? With artificial grass you get all the advantages of real grass with no chance of dead patches, muddy patches or the weekend maintenance ritual.
Never mow again
Imagine having your weekends free to do what you love most without ever having to rev up the mower again. Not only will you never be caught out by unexpected visitors and an untidy lawn, you’ll have the peace of mind of never having to listen to that mower motor pacing up and down your yard ever again!
Save your water
Only grass that grows needs water, so save it for something more useful, like drinking a nice cold glass of it while you are admiring your lawn.
No nasties
Don’t worry about having to use putrid fertilisers, stepping in something nasty, or dealing with seasonal allergies. With synthetic grass this is all a thing of the past, you can sit on it, lie on it, roll in it and get up without being caked in mud or grass clippings.
Can be installed anywhere grass won’t grow or you don’t want to mow
Synthetic grass doesn’t need sunlight , it is quite happy in shady areas and will keep them looking lush whilst providing you with many years of usable space. Being synthetic it doesn’t mind being in constant direct sunlight or harsh conditions, this grass is made to last. Synthetic grass is also at home around the pool, good quality grasses are UV, salt and chlorine resistant.
It might look delicate but its durability will surprise you
As well as homes these grasses are used in schools and council public areas, even dog runs and kennels. Just by looking at these new generation artificial lawns you would be forgiven for thinking they are fragile, but in fact they are extremely durable. They can stand up to the stress of daily traffic, children, pets, are non-flammable and, you can expect high quality synthetic grass to last as long as high quality pavers.
It is available for DIY
For those that are willing, you can install your own synthetic grass. Find a good DIY installation guide do it yourself and save some money.
Turn unusable space into your favourite place
Synthetic lawn is so inviting, you will find that areas that were never used in the past become favourite resting and/or play areas.
You don’t need to leave home to have a practice hit on the green.
If golf is your thing then what could be more luxurious than a putting green in your backyard. There are numerous options when it comes to artificial putting greens. Everything from DIY putting kits through to PGA level greens just like those in the homes of the top golfers, these PGA level greens allow you to chip and pitch from a distance, with a realistic roll from every angle of the green.
Synthetic lawn is used on the fringe of the green and can expand out to truly blend the putting green into the garden landscape.
Of course synthetic putting greens have all the same low maintenance benefits of synthetic grass. So these greens will be ready for play when you are.
Perfect for Children’s play areas
Synthetic grass has always been popular in day care centres, but synthetic lawn takes it to a whole new level of softness. Synthetic grass doesn’t conceal hidden sharps the way that sand or chipped bark can, and synthetic grass can be installed to comply with soft fall standards for use where play equipment is used.
Perfect for pets
Pets adore synthetic grass and it is often used in luxury dog kennels.
Urine will simply soak through and make its way into the earth below, unfortunately there is no way of magically making number 2’s disappear so they will need to be picked up just as you would with real grass, however neither one of these will damage your grass. Removal of waste is purely for you and your dog to avoid any inconvenience.
For dogs that are diggers there are special installation techniques that will ensure your grass lasts as long as it should so make sure you mention this when you are being quoted on installation.
Enduroturf is Australian made, available Australia-wide and recognised as being one of Australia’s largest suppliers and installers of synthetic grass. Brisbane is home to Enduroturf’s head office but you can find our synthetic grass in Melbourne, Geelong , Canberra, Sydney, Cairns, Toowoomba, , Tasmania , Alice Springs, Adelaide and we of course also provide our synthetic grass in Perth. Call us today for a free, no obligation quote or visit us at enduroturf.com.au
Sphere: Related ContentWhat is Sculpture?
Sculpture is an artistic form in which hard or plastic materials are worked into 3-D works of art. The designs may be embodied in freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in environments ranging from tableaux to contexts enveloping the spectator. An unlimited variety of media are often used, including clay, wax, stone, metal, fabric, glass, wood, plaster, rubber, and random “found” objects. Materials are carved, modeled, molded, cast, wrought, welded, sewn, assembled, or otherwise shaped and combined.
Sculpture is not a fixed branding that applies to a permanently restricted category of objects or range of activities. It is, rather, the name given to art that grows and is changing and is continually extending the range of its activities and evolving new types of objects. The breadth of the term became much wider in the second half of the 20th century than as it had been only two or three decades before, and in the fluid state of visual art at the dawn of the 21st century, one simply cannot predict what its future extensions are likely to see.
There are some features which in previous centuries were considered to be essential to the art of sculpture but are now no longer present in a majority of modern sculpture and so no longer form part of a definition. One of the most elementary points of these is representation. Prior to the 20th century, sculpture was seen to be a representational art; an imitation of forms in life, that were mostly of human figures but also inanimate objects, such as game, utensils, and books. From the start of the 20th century, however, sculpture also included nonrepresentational forms. It has long been accepted that forms of such functional three-D objects as furniture, pots, and buildings can be expressive and beautiful without being in any way representational. It was only during the 20th century that nonfunctional, nonrepresentational, 3-D art began to be an art form in and of themselves.
Previous to the 20th century, sculpture was considered fundamentally an art of solid form, or mass. Though the negative elements of sculpture — the voids and hollows underneath and between its solid areas — have always been to some kind of extent an inextricable part of any design, but their role was unacknowledged. In a good deal of modern sculpture, however, the focus of attention has deepened, and the spatial elements have come to be dominant. Spatial sculpture is now a wholly accepted field of the art form.
It was also taken for granted in sculpture from the past that its components had to be of a constant shape and size and, excepting items such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Diana (a monumental weather vane), could not move. With the contemporary development of kinetic sculpture, neither the immobility nor immutability of its form can remain to be seen as essential to defining the art.
Finally, sculpture since the 20th century was not confined to the two traditional forming methods of carving and modeling, or to the traditional natural materials like stone, metal, wood, ivory, bone, and clay. Because modern sculptors may use any materials and methods of manufacture that they wish to, sculpture can no longer be identified for the use of any particular kind of materials or techniques.
With all these changes, there is probably still one aspect that has remained constant in sculpture, and it endures as the central abiding concern of sculptors: the art form is a field of the visual arts that is specially concerned with the creation of form in three dimensions.
Sculpture should be either in the round or in relief. A sculpture in the round will be a separate, detached item in its own right, with a similar independent existence in the world as a human body or a chair. A sculpture that is in relief does not have this independance. It is part of and projects from or is an inextricable part of an object that might serve either as a background for it or a matrix from whence it projects.
The actual three-D nature of sculpture in the round puts limitations on its scope in a few respects compared with the scope of painting. Sculpture cannot have the illusion of space by simple optical means, or invest its structure with atmosphere and light as we might see in painting. But it does proffer a kind of reality, a vivid physical presence that cannot be found in the pictorial arts. Different sculptures can be tangible as well as visible, and appeal strongly and directly to both tactile and visual senses. Even the visually impaired, even those who are congenitally blind, can create and appreciate some sorts of sculpture. It was, in fact, argued by the 20th-century art critic Sir Herbert Read that sculpture should be regarded as elementarily an art of touch and that the roots of sculptural forms can be found in the pleasure one feels in doing this.
All 3D forms are perceived as possessing an expressive character along with solely geometric properties. They are viewed the observer as delicate, aggressive, flowing, taut, relaxed, dynamic, soft, and so forth. By exploiting the evocative qualities of form, sculptors are able to create imagery in which subject matter and expressiveness are mutually reinforcing of form. Such images may go beyond the pure presentation of fact and communicate a vast range of subtle and powerful emotions.
The aesthetic raw material used in sculpture is, so to speak, the whole realm of expressive 3-D form. A sculpture might draw upon what we see exists in the endless variety of natural and man-made form, or it may be an art of simple invention. It has been utilised to express a deep range of human emotions and feelings from the gently tender and delicate to the most violent and ecstatic.
All human beings, inherently involved from birth with the world of 3-D form, know something of its structural and expressive elements and will develop emotional reactions to them. This combination of intellect and response, called a sense of form, may be cultivated and refined. It is to that sense of form that this form of art primarily appeals.
For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse. Become a member for free and get 10% discount on future purchases.
Sphere: Related ContentWhy use Promotional Products?
In the advertising industry the performance of an advert is measured by:- How many people it reaches, how many times they see it, do they relate to it?, do they remember what it was selling?, and most importantly, will it influence them to buy?
We cannot think of any other sort of advertising that is as effective as promotional products at delivering you exposure to customers and creating goodwill that leads to sales.
Consider these examples:-
1. A low cost item like a promotional fridge magnet, custom notepad or promotional drink bottle will offer your company a large amount of repeat advertising exposure to your customer. Your logo/message (or perhaps something as subtle as your telephone number) will always be at hand - they will not have to pick up the Yellow Pages to find your (and your competitors) details.
2. Being given a mid priced item like a promotional desk clock, a branded mousemat or a logo printed coffee mug will present to your existing customers that you appreciate them, they will thank you for it, which in turn will generate goodwill towards you and your business. Furthermore it will produce years of daily exposure to your logo/message. The cost of pre exposure (to your message) will be miniscule.
3. Top clients and staff are hugely important to our business and they will be to yours too. Study has shown that happy staff are productive staff and you will know how much business, say, your top twenty five customers provide. A $30 thank you gift will represent less than 1/1000 of most employees yearly pay!
It may perhaps be a smaller fraction of a contract you are tendering for or the annual sales volume of clients. Some of the largest companies we know are not huge payers but have a focus on staff contentment and showing them they are appreciated - they often use Corporate Gifts. Patting someone on the back and telling them they are wonderful is good but the act of giving is a lot more powerful.
What are Promotional Products?
Promotional Products are goods that can be decorated with a clients name, logo or message on them. The industry is fast growing and has a value of $3.0 billion per annum in Australia. Marketers need to brand their organisation, product, or service is the reason they use Promotion Product’s items and services.
An abundance of other media options are available - newspaper, radio, and direct mail to name a few - however these do not offer the accountability offered by Promotional Product Marketing. Promotional Products are successful, as not only do they communicate your message but your client will thank you for them.
Consider the benefits of Promotional Product Marketing outlined below:
Targeted - Promotional Products only convey your message to the people you are appealing to. No non-prospects, no wasted circulation.
Longevity - A quality Promotional Product will last for years and is used on a daily basis by your client. No other media presents as much exposure.
Versatility - There are so many applications for Promotional Products Marketing that a listing of them would look like the Sydney telephone directory.
Budget Flexible - From a few cents to hundreds of dollars Promotion Products has items to fulfill your individual communication objectives.
Obligation - Good business is based on relationships Promotional Products to customers strengthens these relationships and creates an obligation towards doing business with you and your organisation.
Functional - The Promotional Products we offer are useful ensuring that your client will use the gift and be exposed to your message on a daily basis.
Promotion Products is a Brisbane based company that supplies promotional products such as promotional drink bottles and custom notepads and much, much more, call us on 1300 303 717 at anytime.
Sphere: Related ContentThe History of Weddings
A form of marriage has been discovered to exist in all human societies, past and present. Its importance can be seen in the elaborate and complicated laws and rituals surrounding it. Although these laws and rituals are as different and copious as human social and cultural organizations, some universals do apply.
The central legal function of marriage is to ensure the rights of the partners with respect to each other and to confirm the rights and define the relationships of children within a community. Marriage has historically conferred a legitimate status on the offspring, which entitled him or her to the various privileges assured by the culture of that community, including the right of inheritance. In most societies marriage also established the permissible social relations allowed to the offspring, including the adequate selection of future spouses.
Until the late 20th century, marriage was rarely a matter of free choice. In Western societies love between spouses came to be associated with marriage, but even in Western society (as the novels of writers such as Henry James and Edith Wharton attest) romantic love was not the dominant purpose for matrimony in most eras, and one’s marriage partner was carefully considered.
Endogamy, the custom of marrying someone from within one’s own tribe or group, is the oldest social regulation of marriage. When the forms of communication with outside groups are restrictive, endogamous marriage is a natural consequence. Cultural influences to partner within one’s social, economic, and ethnic group are still very strongly regulated in some societies.
Exogamy, the processof marrying outside the group, is prevalent in societies in which kinship partnerships are the most complex, thus barring from marriage large groups who may trace their lineage to a common ancestry.
In societies in which the large, or extended, family structure remains the basic unit, marriages are usually arranged by the family. The assumption is that love between the partners occurs after marriage, and much thought is given to the socioeconomic advantages given to the larger family from the match. By contrast, in societies in which the small, or nuclear, family predominates, young adults usually choose their own mates. It is assumed that love precedes (and determines) marriage, and less thought is normally given to the socioeconomic aspects of the match.
In societies with arranged marriages, the almost universal custom is that a person acts as an intermediary, or matchmaker. This person’s capitalresponsibility is to arrange a marriage that will be satisfactory to the two families represented. Usually a form of dowry or bridewealth is usually exchanged in societies that favour arranged marriages.
In societies in which individuals choose their own mates, dating is the most typical way for people to meet and become acquainted with prospective partners. Successful dating may result in courtship, which then usually leads to marriage.
Marriage rituals
The rituals and ceremonies surrounding marriage in the majority of cultures are associated primarily with abunduncy and validate the significance of marriage for the continuation of a clan, people, or society. They also assert a familial or communal sanction of the mutual decision and sympathy of the difficulties and sacrifices involved in making what is considered, in most cases, to be a lifelong commitment to and responsibility for the welfare of spouse and children.
Marriage ceremonies include symbolic rites, often sanctified by a religious order, which are considered to confer good fortune on the couple. Because economic considerations play an essential role in the success of child rearing, the offering of gifts, both real and symbolic, to the married couple are a meaningful part of the marriage ritual. When the presentation of goods is extensive, either from the bride’s family to the bridegroom’s or vice versa, this usually signifies that the ability to choose one’s marital partner has been limited and determined by the families of the betrothed.
Fertility rites with the intention to ensure a fruitful marriage exist in some form in all ceremonies. Some of the oldest rituals still to be found in contemporary ceremonies include the prominent display of fruits or of cereal grains that are sprinkled over the couple or on their nuptial bed, the companionship of a small child with the bride, and the breaking of an object or food to cultivate a successful consummation of the marriage and an easy childbirth.
The most universal ritual is one that symbolizes a sacred union. This may be asserted by the joining of hands, an exchange of rings or chains, or the tying of garments. However, all the elements in marriage rituals differ greatly among different societies, and components such as time, place, and the social importance of the event are established by tradition and habit.
These rituals are, to a certain extent, formed by the religious beliefs and practices found in societies throughout the world. In the Hindu tradition, for example, weddings are highly elaborate affairs, involving many prescribed rituals. Marriages are generally arranged by the parents of the couple, and the date of the ceremony is determined by careful astrological calculations. Among the majority of Buddhists marriage remains chiefly a secular affair, even though the Buddha offered guidelines for the responsibilities of lay householders.
In Judaism marriage is thought to have been established by God and is described as making the individual complete. Marriage involves a double ceremony, which includes the formal betrothal and wedding rites (prior to the 12th century the two were separated by as much as one year). The modern ceremony begins with the groom signing the marriage contract before a group of witnesses. He is then led to the bride’s room, where he places a veil on her. This is followed by the ceremony under the huppa (a canopy that signifies the bridal bower), which involves the reading of the marriage contract, the seven marriage benedictions, the groom’s placing a ring on the bride’s finger (in Conservative and Reform traditions the double ring ceremony has been introduced), and, in most communities, the crushing of a glass under foot. After the ceremony the couple is led into a private room for seclusion, which symbolizes the consummation of the marriage.
From its beginnings, Christianity has emphasized the spiritual nature and indissolubility of marriage. Jesus Christ spoke of marriage as being instituted by God, and most Christians consider it a unbreakable union based upon mutual consent. Some Christian churches consider marriage as one of the sacraments, and other Christians confirm the sanctity of marriage but don’t consider it as a sacrament. Since the Middle Ages, Christian weddings have taken place before a priest or minister, and the ceremony involves the exchange of vows, readings from Scripture, a blessing, and, sometimes, the eucharistic rite.
In Islam marriage is not strictly a sacrament but is always considered as a gift from God or a kind of service to God. The basic Islamic tenets concerning marriage are written in the Qur’an, which states that the marital bond rests on “mutual love and mercy,” and that spouses are “each other’s garments.” Muslim men are allowed to have up to four wives at one time (though they seldom do), but the wives must all be treated equitably. Marriages are traditionally contracted by the father or guardian of the bride and her intended husband, who must offer his bride the mahr, a payment offered as a gift to guarantee her financial independence.
If you are looking for a Cairns wedding celebrant, a wedding celebrant in Cairns or a Cairns civil celebrant, contact Del at sharingandcaringcairns.com.au
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