Why did the wedding of the ancients take place at night?

According to "White Tiger Yi Tong", "Those who get married are said to salute at dusk, so they get married." What's the special significance of dusk? The ancients often used yin and yang to explain everything in the world, and dusk was the time when yin and yang alternated. Men belong to yang and women belong to yin. The combination of men and women coincides with the alternation of yin and yang, so it does not go against the sky.

In fact, the wedding has gone through a long historical period from birth to perfection. According to the research of relevant scholars, in primitive society, people practiced group marriage and often did not have a fixed spouse. Later, with the further improvement of productivity and civilization consciousness, there was a pairing marriage. In the period from group marriage to husband-and-wife marriage, in order to obtain mating rights, men often take the way of robbing relatives. However, the bride-snatching is usually carried out at night, and the bride who is snatched back gets married immediately. Over time, a wedding ceremony at a fixed moment is formed. This kind of wedding ceremony experienced the inheritance of Xia and Shang Dynasties, and formed a complete wedding ceremony in the "depressed and elegant" Zhou Dynasty.

In the eyes of the ancients, a wedding is not only a guarantee of two people's love, but also a political and ethical behavior. "Those who are polite must have two surnames", which determines that the wedding is a social behavior of establishing relations between two families or even two families. Since it involves two families, it involves too many factors. Therefore, the wedding is not only a matter between two parties or two families, but also an ethical behavior to adjust social relations.

The wedding procedure is extremely complicated and full of ceremony, so it is extremely grand. The records about the behavior, speech and related matters of the wedding ceremony can be traced back to Yi Li's Ten Weddings and Li Ji's Wedding Ceremony in the pre-Qin period. It stipulated the so-called "Six Rites", which has been a model for 3,000 years and has influenced so far.