Kittel

Under some chuppahs, the groom wears neither a three-piece suit nor traditional dress, but a long, plain white robe, often made of cotton or fine linen and closed at the front: the kittel. He puts it on over his shirt and trousers, usually just before the ceremony, and wears it throughout the chuppah. Seen from the crowd, the image is striking — a groom in white, as radically stripped down as his bride may be richly adorned.

The contrast is intentional. The kittel is not a festive garment: it is, at its root, a garment of reflection, the same one many men wear at synagogue on Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar.

The same garment as Yom Kippur — and that's no coincidence

Pairing a wedding with the Day of Atonement can seem surprising: one is the peak of joy, the other the peak of judgment and introspection. That contrast is exactly what the kittel is meant to carry. It's often noted that on his wedding day, a person receives a forgiveness comparable to that of Yom Kippur — past wrongs are considered wiped clean at the start of a new life. So the groom wears, at the height of his happiness, the very garment that accompanies him at the height of solemnity: a reminder that the most intense joy should stay clear-eyed, not intoxicating.

Three meanings, one garment

The kittel condenses several ideas into a garment deliberately stripped of ornament:

• purity — white, the color of snow and forgiveness in Jewish tradition, is a reminder that marriage opens a clean page;
• humility — an identical garment for everyone, carrying no mark of wealth or status, at the very moment the groom might be tempted to shine;
• a reminder of mortality — the kittel is cut like a shroud, the garment one is eventually buried in. Under the chuppah, this reminder is not morbid: it invites the groom not to get carried away by his own happiness, to stay aware that life is finite and that every union must be built with seriousness.

An Ashkenazi custom — rarely Sephardic or Mizrahi

This is the most important point to understand, to avoid overgeneralizing: the kittel is an Ashkenazi custom. It is widespread in Orthodox and 'traditional' Ashkenazi weddings — from Hasidic circles to simply observant families — but it does not generally belong to the Sephardic or Mizrahi repertoire.

• Ashkenazi: the kittel under the chuppah is a long-established, generation-to-generation custom; in Hasidic circles especially, it is nearly universal.
• Sephardic and Mizrahi (Moroccan, Iraqi, Persian, Yemenite…): the custom of a kittel at the wedding generally doesn't exist; the groom wears a suit or an outfit specific to his community, often rich and colorful rather than plain. The symbolism of purity and humility is carried there by other moments in the ceremony, not by this particular garment.
• As with many Ashkenazi customs, one does today find, depending on family background and local influences, Sephardic weddings where the groom nonetheless chooses to wear a kittel — out of personal attachment to the symbolism or a mixed family heritage. That remains a conscious exception, though, not the norm.

So it isn't a neutral detail to add by default to a ceremony booklet or the staging of a wedding: presenting the kittel as a self-evident "Jewish" custom without noting its Ashkenazi roots would erase part of the diversity of Jewish wedding traditions.

The kittel today

In contemporary Ashkenazi weddings, the kittel is still worn with the same seriousness as generations ago, even in families that are otherwise not very traditional for the rest of the ceremony. It is generally given to the groom by his in-laws or his own family, sometimes on the occasion of his first synagogue visit as a married man (the aufruf), and then comes back out every year on Yom Kippur — making the wedding day the point of origin for a garment worn throughout a lifetime, tied to the gravest as well as the happiest moments of a Jewish life.