Dreams about weddings may be among the most memorable of our lives. We slip a packet of tissues into our pockets before a wedding with good reason. Weddings are infused with an archetypal power supercharged by thousands of years of stirring ritual.

The power of the wedding archetype looms large in the culture: weddings feed an enormous, profitable industry around fashion, food and photography. We come together to watch spectacles like the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, or Prince Harry and Meghan. The film industry lures us in with weddings: Maria and Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Princess Bride, and many more. 

We may also be surprised by the extent to which our own wedding feels like a profound marker in our life story, even if it happened after many years of living together and parenting. Undoubtedly, there is a power to this sacrament that seems to create a “third thing”: I marry my partner, and our union becomes something new, outside of ourselves. 

The Wedding Archetype and the Union of Opposites

It comes as no surprise that dreams of weddings can be among the most moving and significant of our lives. Wedding dreams show us the deep symbolic relationship between the inner and the outer marriage. Just as we struggle with our messy, infuriating, uncooperative real-life partner (and through this struggle become acquainted more deeply with the self); we also grapple with marriage in our inner world, as we strive to bring together the opposites within. 

This is the lifework of individuation, and as with the outer marriage, the journey to the sacred inner marriage takes many years, and the dance with anima/ animus moves through cycles of love and suffering. Our inner partner may feel demonic, then divine; appearing first as adversary, then later as ally. When we understand its mission, we can embrace it in all its forms.

Jung often uses the term “hieros gamos”, which is Greek for sacred marriage. He also refers frequently in the Collected Works to the “chymical wedding”, which represents a reconciliation of fundamental polarities within the psyche. The sacred wedding is the bringing together of opposites. 

As every Jungian knows, this is central to many fairy tales, which so often end with the scene of a wedding that resolves the hero or heroine’s tribulations in a symbolic representation of individuation. 

We had many dreams submitted for our episode on Wedding Dreams (listen to the episode here): below is a summary of the dream analysis that made up the episode. 

Wedded to the Self

I find myself in an ornate vestibule of a cathedral. Having come in on one side of it, I see a bride in a beautiful white gown entering through the archways on the opposite side. I see a gorgeous rose window above her, like the one in Notre Dame. The luminous bride is being led by a huge Great Dane dog with a gold medallion on a red satin ribbon around its neck. I look to my right and an orchestra is raising their instruments to begin playing the wedding march. I can just peek inside the church doors to my left at all the people inside turning and rising to their feet, and the incredible beauty of tall stained glass windows inside. I do not go in because I notice a ladder leaning on the wall and ending in an opening in the wall far above me. I climb the ladder and enter a strange room filled with books. 

One book stands out. It is on a pedestal and is incredibly large. I go over to it and flip through some pages. A voice says over my shoulder that this book contains all the knowledge in all the world, but that I have all the knowledge I need. I notice another opening to the outside with another ladder that I descend on. Outside the church, I find a large table filled with all the teachers I have ever known and will ever know, all having a meal together. A place is there for me, and I join them in a wonderful meal. Afterwards none of them speak to me, even though I’m trying to continue to speak to them. They scatter in all directions and on different roads down the mountain. There is only one road left that no one takes and I begin to walk on it up the mountain (The dreamer is a 61-year-old woman who had this dream at age 42.).

This is a beautiful example of a dream about being wedded to the self and to the central mission in one’s life, which for this dreamer seems to be the acquisition of knowledge. 

The bride in her white dress, walking down the aisle, presents as an aspect of the dreamer that is ready to engage in a sacred wedding. The cathedral can be seen as a symbol of the self that references spiritual life: the container where sacred things take place. Rose windows are mandalas, another symbol of the self, and the Notre Dame example in this dream is particularly beautiful. The rose is also an archetypal symbol of the Virgin Mary, pointing to the divine feminine, of which the dreamer is offered a beautiful glimpse.  

After seeing the bride, the dreamer moves into a world of books, knowledge, teachers, and teaching. This points to many old monastic traditions in which one would wed the spirit, and dedicate one’s life to study, solitude and introspection: a worthy marriage if the impulse in the dreamer’s heart is true. 

The Great Dane adds an enlivening dose of instinctual energy. This outsized dog brings to mind archetypal animals such as the unicorn which laid its head on the Virgin’s lap in the medieval myth, or the Strength Tarot key, in which a feminine figure leans over a lion and opens its mouth. The dog is an image of the dreamer’s instinctual self, which will be tethered in service to a great mission, just like the archetypal unicorn and lion.

The ending of the dream is poignant – the dreamer takes the only road left, the one that no-one else has taken. The dream has led her to the only path that is right for her. Whilst the teachers go down the mountain, the dreamer ascends it, symbolically moving closer to connection with a higher power. 

This is also a dream that takes place in three stages – the wedding, the library scene and then the meal and departure. This can represent three ways we can approach our own psychological process: wisdom, understanding and knowledge. The wedding scene captures the vision of Sophia, which is to know what is true. Then, the library scene shows us the principle of understanding: diving into the logical consequences of the truth we have discovered. Finally, knowledge has to do with carrying wisdom and understanding out into the world, symbolized by the lone dreamer setting out on her path out into the world. 

If you’ve loved learning about dream symbols with us here or on the podcast, we invite you to take a look at Dream School, This Jungian Life’s 12-month online course in the art of dream interpretation.

Anima/Animus in Wedding Dreams

The anima/animus often shows up in dreams about weddings. Anima/animus can be understood as a compelling, opposite-sex other. It is infused with non-personal, archetypal qualities; light or dark, the anima/animus is captivating, universal, and autonomous. The anima/animus is concerned with connecting us to the inner world and the collective unconscious. If this energy remains unconscious, it can possess us; when we can cultivate a relationship with it, it’s inspiring.

An anima/animus figure will often appear in your dreams as someone who is not currently in your life, who feels compelling and who offers a route to connection with your deep interior. A dream image of marriage to the anima can be a powerful symbol of initiation into your depths.

In my dream, which is in black and white, I’m standing inside a church, very dimly lit, that I can hardly see it in its entirety. It is bare of furnishings and feels several centuries old. Although I do not see them with my own eyes, it feels to me that inside the church, weddings are going on, one after another. 

In the next scene, I see a beautiful, dusky young woman in a white wedding dress. I recognize her as a classmate studying nursing back in college, who I’ve not seen for nearly 20 years. She opens the church door and walks all by herself towards the inner part of the church. I see no one else inside the church.

As I watch her walk, I start feeling that it is 1969, the year of my birth. At that point, it makes me wonder how it could be possible for me to be in that place at a time when I was just being or about to be born (The dreamer is a 54-year-old male).

This long-lost classmate is a perfect example of an anima figure in a dream: a solitary woman, alone in an ancient, dark and beautiful church, carrying with her the healing, caring qualities of her profession as a nurse.

As the dream draws to an end, the dreamer is confused by the realization that these events are unfolding on the day of his birth. His dream points intriguingly to both the possibility of the dreamer getting married, AND to his own birth. It brings together the archetypal content of wedding and of birth. 

Jung was very clear that archetypes activate during times of crises and particularly when ruling ideas have lost their meaning. This dreamer told us he was going through a period of uncertainty, and then this rich dream arrived, presenting him with a beautiful woman who seems to have existed since the moment of his birth. It is a stunning vision of his destiny and the goddess Fortuna – the dream maker is telling him that this presence has been with him since he was born. 

Dreams About Marriage in the Outer World

Most dreams comment on our inner world, but sometimes dreams will comment on outer world situations. This dream is a good example – the dreamer tells us in her context and associations that the dream was full of pain, that her husband is distant in real life, and that she woke up from the dream in distress. The dream might be commenting on the state in which she finds her relationship. 

Last night I had a dream that my husband was going off to marry another woman, and she was just like my father’s mistress in real life. My husband was leaving me. 

I felt so much pain in my body when I woke up and I cried too. I am emotionally preparing because I believe this might happen, as so many of my dreams do. (The dreamer is a 26-year-old woman). 

For this dreamer, there are possibly unresolved lingering reverberations and repercussions of a family trauma that happened when her father left her mother for another woman. This may threaten the very archetype of marriage for her: the concept of a loyal bond to one person has been disrupted, and she is left with the insecurity that leads her to question whether this will happen to her, too. 

The dreamer says that in real life, her husband is “distant”. The dream may be commenting on her husband’s inner life, and asking her to be curious about where he is at. There is a stage  in marriage where we move from projecting our inner potential onto our partner, toward seeking out a discovery of our own internal “partner”. When one person in a marriage is undergoing this process, some of the projections that used to fuel the marriage have been withdrawn, and the other person may be left feeling like this dreamer – lonely and in pain, because her husband is possibly more interested in self-development and less interested in the romance of the partnership. This is often a dimension of a midlife crisis. 

There are also, however, instances when dreams are blunt and directly reality-oriented. We are aware of several cases in which a spouse has had dreams that have predicted a partner’s infidelity. Whether or not this particular dream is pre-cognitive, it may be underlining something the dreamer already knows but does not want to face, which is that there is a drift in her marriage that she needs to attend to. 

If we did decide to interpret this dream as a comment on the dreamer’s inner world, we could also view it as a negative animus dream. It is clear that there has been family trauma, and the animus of a woman is often deeply influenced by her relationship with her father. It may be that her father’s infidelity and desertion have left her without access to a positive animus energy. 

Have you read our article on Understanding Your Dreams with Jungian Dream Interpretation?

Wedding Dreams, Commitment and Ambivalence

At the heart of the wedding ritual is a lifelong commitment. This dream presents an ambivalence about the act of commitment (and for context, the dreamer told us she has recently realized she has a lifelong wariness about commitment, and had felt this realization as an important psychological breakthrough). 

I’ve been invited to Kate Middleton’s wedding and I’m waiting for her to arrive with a crowd of guests. We’re waiting in a desert landscape. Someone in the crowd sees Kate in the distance and everyone starts cheering. We are all happy and excited. Then I see a big four story house, but it’s only a facade, like a theater prop. It is decorated with street art and graffiti. On each level is a long balcony filled with bridesmaids. They’re not wearing traditional bridesmaid dresses, but rather dark blue outfits trimmed with white, a cross between a school uniform and a Middle Eastern men’s robe. I think approvingly of how creative and different Kate has made the ceremony and how she has rejected some of the boring sexist norms of a wedding. I decide to say loudly, “wow, she has so many friends. I couldn’t fill even one level of this house”. The crowd laughs approvingly, but I feel a little ashamed and wonder if they actually feel sorry for me. Then I notice that there’s a large graffiti saying Saudi Airy Iran, which makes me feel uneasy (the dreamer is a 46-year-old woman). 

The dream holds out to the dreamer the prospect of a beautiful, fairy tale royal wedding – a kind of idealized commitment – but then surrounds this prospect with ambivalence. Wedding norms are criticised, there is a building that is an empty facade covered with graffiti, and there is a deep uneasiness about an arid, featureless location. There is also shame, as the dreamer makes a joke she felt wasn’t quite right. 

Dreams are often compensatory. This dreamer was elated about a psychological breakthrough which left her feeling she must commit to life more deeply. Then, along comes a dream directing her, perhaps, to be aware of the demands that new commitments will make of her to face things that are shameful, and to come into conflict. The dream maker is always directing us to see the other side of our experiences. 

Yet this dreamer is trying hard to play along, feeling excited about the bride’s arrival, and cheering for her along with the crowd. The possibility of achieving the inner marriage symbolized by Kate is very real in the dream. In the end, the dream is hopeful – after all, the dreamer has been invited to the biggest and most extravagant wedding of our era, which is not something that happens to most of us. This dreamer is fighting for something that’s important to her and her psyche is cheering her on, whilst also asking her to look at potential difficulties with a clear eye. 

Here is another dream that seems to explore a deep ambivalence about commitment:

I’ve got a ticket to go to a wedding. It’s a flight, but the wedding is very soon, in an hour or so. And I’ve not even got on the flight. I’m trying to get to the airport on a road whose lanes on one side turn into a waterway. One lane goes to a boat and the other lane goes to an airport. Then I’m waiting somewhere, possibly the airport foyer. There are other people there who are going to the wedding. I seem not to be well-regarded. I seem to be regarded as strong and uncompromising and also dangerous in a physical sense. A woman there has a go at me for flashing my money about. I tell her that I think if I have enough, then I should be able to give it to other people.

I look at my ticket, which is like a small booklet, comprised of scratch games to win prizes. I can’t see any details of the flight or how to get the flight. The person who got me the ticket should have explained it (the dreamer is a 57-year-old psychotherapist, who, with his wife, is in the process of selling each of their apartments to buy a house together).

The movement towards a wedding here is surrounded by ambivalence and uncertainty. It is a “chain reaction dream”, in which events unfold chaotically, without resolution, and the goal of making the wedding seems to recede into the distance. The road turns into a waterway, a stranger verbally attacks the dreamer, his plane ticket turns into a scratch card and then he can’t figure out how to board the flight. 

As this dreamer moves towards investing in real estate with his wife, his dream is perhaps expressing ambivalence about making this huge commitment, and about his capacity to make a success of this stage of his life. 

When approaching a dream, we should always question the attitude of the dream ego. In this dream, the  dream ego feels that he is coming across as strong, uncompromising, dangerous and flashy. There is no evidence, however, that he is really dangerous, and strength and the desire to give away money are more likely to be positives than negatives. 

We might guess that this dreamer feels wary of embodying the strong masculine qualities needed for a house purchase: decisiveness, rationality, and perhaps a little ruthlessness. It is significant that he works as a psychotherapist, a caring, healing profession where more traditionally feminine qualities are often emphasised. In the culture more generally, masculinity can be viewed with suspicion: we can hypothesize that this dreamer has an ambivalent relationship with his masculine qualities.

As the dreamer struggles to reach the goal of getting to the wedding, he seems to feel passive and powerless. The last sentence is “the person who got me the ticket should have explained it”. As a psychotherapist, he has been trained to put aggression and assertiveness underground – and now, when those qualities are called for, he is struggling to find them. 

The symbol of the scratch-card in this dream is also important. It may symbolize the tendency to live in fantasy: the idea that there is a way that things we yearn for will come to us easily. This fantasy can act as an addictive distraction from the value of what’s right in front of us. 

If you’d like to know more about dream symbols and the art of Jungian dream interpretation, don’t miss our new book, Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams.

Five More Wedding Dreams

Readers sent us hundreds of dreams, and sadly, we could not analyze them all. Here, we reprint five more wedding dreams that stood out to us for you to consider and reflect on. 

A Wedding by the Sea

In my dream I was with my partner on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. It looked like Hawaii. The view was expansive. The sea waves were crashing and mist was spraying up and touching our skin. I was pregnant with a big belly wearing a white silk dress. It was a small wedding. My partner was illuminated with a golden light orb but I could not see his face. We were holding hands and when I looked into his eyes we merged into One. Me, him, the baby, and the sea (this dreamer, a 42-year-old woman, recently went through a heartbreaking separation from her partner after undergoing surgery on her reproductive system and experiencing uncertainty over whether they would have children).

The Ultimate Test of Trust

I was standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in my wedding dress, after marrying my best friend. We were about to engage in a wedding tradition to prove our love and trust in each other. The two ends of a long rope were tied to our waists, and we had to jump off opposite sides of the bridge at the same moment so that our weight would balance each other and neither of us would hit the water. If only one of us jumped, it meant death. It was the ultimate test of trust. If he doubted me, he might not jump in order to save himself. We both climbed over and then met each other’s eyes and then I woke up (this dreamer is a 30-year-old woman who says she was in a complicated relationship with her best friend. They were in love but he had struggled to make a commitment).

An Accident at a Wedding

I am with my nuclear family driving from my wedding ceremony to the reception – except that my boyfriend and I never booked a reception venue, so my dad is on the phone trying to find a last-minute venue. We arrive at a hotel lobby, where we’ve decided to gather everyone while we continue to search. I head out back to try to look for an adequate outdoor location. Trying to reach a covered stone enclave in the side of some bluffs (which seems like a great option for the reception in the dream) I slip and fall into the water. Looking up, I now notice that I’ve fallen a much longer way than I’d realize. I start to climb up the cliff, afraid and yelling for help. My family members gather around the top of the cliff, trying to pull me back over. All together, they try and fail. My mom then singlehandedly grabs my forearms with ferocity, I grab hers, and she pulls me back over the edge (this dreamer is a 28-year-old woman who at the time of the dream was considering becoming engaged to her boyfriend, and moving across the country). 

Arriving at My Wedding, Wearing a Towel

I dreamed that I arrived at a church in an old fashioned black car from the 1940s. I was wearing my wedding dress but I didn’t want anyone to see it. I wrapped a towel around myself and ran into the church. I went into a private room to wait for the ceremony. I laid down on a bed to rest. A kitten jumped onto my face and I groaned, “Not another one!” Then I noticed that my friends had created a banner for me covered in flying blue birds (this dreamer is a 46-year-old woman who is divorced, but living with a “wonderful new partner”. She has financial and other anxieties about marrying the new partner). 

Wedding Preparations Gone Wrong

It was our wedding day and I was at the altar, but ran out because I needed to put my contacts in. Then I called my dad, and he said he forgot the date and that he was sorry, but he couldn’t make it. Then I look in the mirror and see my old blonde hair, with my old black glasses from my European trip in 2016 that I took solo, two weeks after I met my now fiance. I’m trying to put contact lenses in because my fiance doesn’t like the old me. There’s a woman in the hall telling me I’d better hurry, because my fiance is waiting. Everyone is freaking out, wondering where I am. Then I go off on a bike riding down a trail and past a tennis court, with Lucas (a boy from elementary school). There’s a German Shepard and he’s growling at a joint on the ground. Lucas says to come on. I say I wish I remembered the hand signals from bike rodeo (this dreamer is a 33-year-old woman who had become engaged, but then her wedding was rescheduled and ultimately called off).