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Wedding in dreams: what it can mean

  • Love and relationships
  • New beginnings
  • Change

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The short answer

Weddings in dreams can be about an actual relationship, but just as often about commitment, a decision, or joining two parts of your life.

Your dream is not everyone's

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

If a wedding is being planned or talked about, the continuity view expects it to show up in dreams, often with anxious details: the wrong dress, a missing guest, the wrong partner. When no wedding is in sight, the image is frequently read as commitment to a choice, a merger of roles, or pressure from family expectations. Marrying an unexpected person is common and is not a sign of hidden feelings for them by itself.

Classic texts

History

Artemidorus treated marriage as a great change of state and so connected it with other such changes, sometimes in surprising ways, depending on the dreamer's circumstances. The point for him was the transition rather than the romance.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What are you committing to, or being asked to commit to, right now?
  2. How did you feel at the wedding: happy, trapped, like a guest at your own event?
  3. Whose expectations were present in the dream?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  2. Calvin S. Hall, Vernon J. Nordby (1972). The Individual and His Dreams. New York: New American Library.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: continuity of dreams and waking concerns (reference not yet checked)

    Early statement of the continuity idea: dreams carry over the concerns of waking life.

  3. Artemidorus of Daldis (1644). The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), in five books, translated by Robert Wood. London.

    first published 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Book II, on marriage (reference not yet checked)

    Greek dream manual from the Roman era. We paraphrase the public-domain Wood translation (1644). Modern translations (White 1975, Harris-McCoy 2012, Hammond 2020) are copyrighted and only cited.