Wedding customs

Please could anyone tell me about early wedding customs in Australia?

I heard my mother mention 'being Tin Kettled'

And what was behind tying objects on to the back of a bride and
grooms car.

Throwing rice?

Cape Breton Barbarian...

A surprise party for a newly married couple, called a charivari (Fr.) or
shivaree (Eng.), was a social event in colonial Upper Canada and early
Ontario. A dictionary defines shivaree as: a noisy mock serenade of a newly
married couple - which is a bit of an understatement. The Dammed Lakes
(Jones, 1989) mentions Bedford Township Council's 1898 legislation for
protecting public morality which included constraints on noise making -
which , among other things, included a bylaw for the prevention of
charivaris. The Bedford bylaw used the French spelling of the event.

On some night, after a newly married couple had gone to bed and the lights
were out, friends and neighbours secretly collected outside in the yard with
cow bells, whistles, lights and pots and pans to bang - all to make their
presence known. Then an unmerciful din began, which might include some
singing amid shouting, cheering, bell ringing and clanking, and banging on
the door. Sometimes ladders were brought to peek in the second story windows
and embarrass the inhabitants . When the door was opened, the horde poured
into the house in what we would call a home invasion today. The couple,
perhaps not fully dressed, found themselves in a party which might go on for
hours. The self invited guests would bring food and drink and musical
instruments to provide entertainment and dancing.

In some unexplainable way a shivaree in the past marked recognition of a
couple in a rural community. No doubt the Irish practiced this social event
in Bedford Township, and the bylaw was not likely to have had much effect -
after all, who would enforce it when everyone participated! Often the event
was reported in the social column of a local newspaper. Having been half of
the target of a shivaree in Prince Edward County, I can report that it was a
shocking surprise and a lot of fun.