Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Marriage custom is an important composition of a nation’s traditional culture. The paper focuses on analyzing the cultural differences between Chinese and American marriage customs from three aspects: marriage taboo, marriage ceremony and aesthetic conception，including the analysis of three influencing factors :the religion belief, the cultural value and the economic influence. The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of Chinese and America traditional culture and improve our two countries’ cross-cultural communication through the study of marriage customs in different cultures.

Key words: Chinese marriage custom; American marriage custom; cultural difference

摘要：婚礼习俗是一个国家传统文化的重要体现，本文运用比较研究的方法、分别从婚俗的禁忌，婚礼仪式以及婚俗的审美情趣这三个方面来分析中美两国婚俗的文化差异以及造成这些差异的原因，包括宗教信仰，文化价值观以及经济因素，旨在通过了解不同文化背景下的婚礼习俗,正确理解两国人民的言行，在交际过程中充分了解对方，促进人们的跨文化交流。

关键词：中国婚俗；美国婚俗；文化对比

1. Introduction
Marriage custom, as a special cultural phenomenon, comes into being with marriage. And as the formation of family, marriage not only means a man and a woman merging into an organic whole, but also includes the procedure and celebrating activities with distinctive ethnic features. This is what we call marriage custom. It is like a mirror reflecting a nation’s view of social visage, social value, religion belief, psychology and ethic, which is also the cultural accumulation and wealth created in common by all mankind. Therefore, form this point to analyze the culture differences between China and America; it will be easy and deep understood by us.
No matter in the past or at present, many scholars have studied marriage custom of different countries, and most of them study this topic from the macroscopic perspective. However, the studies that concretely analyze the cultural differences of traditional marriage customs are very little. So this thesis focuses on analyzing the culture differences of traditional marriage customs between China and America. Not only that, it will give a briefly analysis of influencing factors that cause cultural differences.