I just started a book called Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop. (He means "liberalism" in the classic sense, not liberalism as we know it today.) He begins by explaining the ancient ideas of personal identity and family. One of the items you might be interested in is the practice of carrying the bride over the threshold into her new home.
Before the Greeks and Romans developed the pantheon we're familiar with today, they worshiped their ancestors. Worship was passed down from father to oldest son and centered around keeping the family hearth alive with hot coals. If the hearth died, the family could expect punishment from their ancestors who relied on the family hearth to keep warm and obtain food.
Children had identity based on their association with the patriarch of the family and his identity was associated with those who came before him--from male to male. Girls weren't very important. (In Rome daughters usually didn't have names, they were Daughter One and Daughter Two and so on.) Daughters who were to be married underwent a ceremony in which the father kicked them out of the family. When she arrived at her new home, her newly wed husband had to carry her into the house because she had no right to enter until she was formally inducted into the family through another ceremony--hence the practice of carrying a bride over the threshold.
Amazing how this ancient practice persists, isn't it?
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