My girl-hood wedding fantasy consisted of all the Anglo traditions; something borrowed and blue; a six-pence in my shoe; big white dress - wedding spoons for luck and a bridal doll filled with lavender.  I even thought I would make homemade mead and serve the traditional spice cake still celebrated in England.  Alas!  To my surprise, I fell in love with a Frenchman and felt that all my careful research would fly right out the window!   Not true, however.  In fact, Christophe's American stepmother said something very valuable to me when planning our wedding in France.  She told me not to be so enthused with the French traditions that I forget my own.  Half of this arrangement, afterall, IS American! 
I took her advice and am so happy I did.

French weddings are actually not so different from American weddings.  The biggest difference, perhaps, is that they do not have a wedding party as we do (flower girls, bridesmaids, groomsmen, etc.)  You simply have one witness each and that's enough. In a way, I was relieved to not have to select hideous peppermint dresses and impose them on my girlfriends.  The other difference is that there are two ceremonies 1) the city hall, and 2) the church.  Of course, as in our case, the church ceremony is not a requirement, but it is usually expected by the families. Trying to explain my Mormon background and lack of it in the past few generations was just too much!  If you're Catholic, you're IN!  ;-)

As far as actual traditions, they have all the same ones we do with the addition of "the soup".  For this I was not prepared!  It is more an event than an actual dish.  Basically, on your wedding night, LONG after you've retired to your honey-moon bed, all of the participating young people BURST in to your room (supposedly to interupt your love making and catch you unaware) and force you to eat "the soup" as a symbol of fertility. The "soup" itself varies depending on where you are from, but usually it is supposed to be gross. In our region, it consisted of a chambor pot filled with champagne with little chocolate "poops" floating in it.  Ha ha! It was SO funny!  I only wish I had something more elegant on than a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and I'm afraid we were simply to tired for them to catch us doing anything but sleeping (our reception didn't end until 5:00 a.m., and they burst in at 7:00!).