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A ''confarreatio'' wedding ceremony was a rare event reserved for the highest echelons of Rome's elite. The [[Flamen Dialis]] and [[pontifex maximus]] presided, with ten witnesses present, and the bride and bridegroom shared a cake of [[spelt]] (in [[Latin]] ''far'' or ''panis farreus''), hence the rite's name.<ref name="Lind2008">{{cite book|author=Goran Lind|title=Common Law Marriage : A Legal Institution for Cohabitation: A Legal Institution for Cohabitation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e-kJxOISFSMC&pg=PA38|date=23 July 2008|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=978-0-19-971053-9|pages=38–}}</ref> A more typical upper-middle class wedding in the classical period was less prestigious than a ''confarreatio'', but could be equally lavish. It would have been carefully planned. Sometimes the bride and groom exchanged gifts before the wedding.<ref name=Treggiari/>
The lighting of a sacred torch in honor of [[Ceres (mythology)|Ceres]] was part of the celebration, intended to impart fertility upon the couple.<ref>"The most [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#arbor felix|auspicious wood]] for wedding torches came from the ''spina alba'', the [[Crataegus|may tree]], which bore many fruits and hence symbolised fertility": Spaeth, Barbette Stanley, ''The Roman goddess Ceres'', University of Texas Press, 1996. {{ISBN|0-292-77693-4}}. Spaeth is citing [[Pliny the Elder]], ''Historia Naturalis'', 30.75.</ref> A wedding sacrifice was also offered, with a sow being the most likely [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#victima|
Varro, ''Rerum Rusticarum'', 2.4.10 describes the sacrifice of a pig as "a worthy mark of weddings" because "our women, and especially nurses" call the female genitalia ''porcus'' (pig). Ceres may have been included in the sacrificial dedication, because she is closely identified with Tellus and, as ''Ceres legifera'' (law-bearer), she "bears the laws" of marriage; see Spaeth, 1996, pp. 5, 6, 44–47</ref><ref>[[Maurus Servius Honoratus|Servius]], ''On Vergil's Aeneid'', 4.58, "implies that Ceres established the laws for weddings as well as for other aspects of civilized life." For more on Roman attitudes to marriage and sexuality, Ceres' role at marriages and the ideal of a "chaste married life" for Roman matrons, see Staples, Ariadne, ''From Good Goddess to vestal virgins: sex and category in Roman religion'', Routledge, 1998, pp. 84–93.</ref> The day after the wedding, the husband would hold a dinner party, and the bride made an offering to the [[Lares]] and other domestic deities of her new home.<ref name=Treggiari/><ref>Orr, D. G., Roman domestic religion: the evidence of the household shrines, pp. 15–16 in ''Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt'', II, 16, 2, Berlin, 1978, 1557‑91.</ref>
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