All the pictures are from http://thebridesguide.marthastewartweddings.com/ and http://www.erpbyalyson.blogspot.com/
The bridal shower dates back at least three hundred years, when a beautiful Dutch girl fell in love with a good-hearted but poor miller. Since his daughter wouldn’t be properly provided for, her father refused to let them marry. Friends and neighbors wanted to see the love match succeed, so they created a procession and marched to the young woman’s house, each bearing a gift to help set up her household. They showered her with enough blankets, linens, pots, and pans to rival a respectable dowry. The show of support helped convince the father to agree to the marriage. The foundation of the shower, then, is all about gift giving.
Bachelor Parties
The bachelor party can be traced all the way back to fifth-century Sparta. The stag night involved much feasting and toasting with wine, and possibly some more explicit forms of farewells to single life. Guests even collected funds to give to the groom so that he’d be able to go out drinking with his friends once his wife held the purse strings. This custom lingers on at modern-day parties- if there’s a game of poker or any activity involving a kitty, it’s handed to the groom-to-be at the end of the evening.
Queen Victoria is the reason why brides wear white (before her Brides would simply wear their best dresses). She realized how special pure white could be because it shows how the dress has never been worn before. The Queen’s wedding was the first to be photographed and finally brides all across England had something to emulate. She was not known for her looks but on that day she looked radiant and her appearance convinced the world that every bride could be beautiful. Also the Queen’s train was so long it took twelve train-bearers to get her down the aisle, and her wedding cake is said to have measured three yards around.
The Pearl
There’s a long tradition of fathers giving pearls to their daughters as wedding gifts and there is also an entire web of superstition that surrounds them. Many cultures associate pearls with innocence and purity. The Greeks called pearls the “wedding gem” and believed they would prevent newlywed brides from crying- but some brides wouldn’t be caught dead in pearls as they’re also thought to cause tears and bring marriage bad luck. Nobody’s really sure where that belief comes from, but it has stuck around. To further muddle the topic, legend also goes that it’s good luck for a bride to shed tears on her wedding day; that way she gets it all out at the altar! Superstitions aside, many a bride opts for the classic look and elegant shimmer of a pearl necklace or a pair of pearl earrings. And how could she go wrong with a gem once thought so precious it could only be legally worn by a member of English royal family?
While groomsmen and bridesmaids serve largely ceremonial roles today, it wasn’t always so. During the Middle Ages, when robbers were common and a young woman needed an entourage to protect her virtue, the groomsmen, known as “bride’s knights,” were charged with safely escorting the bride from her home to the wedding. Similarly, the tradition of having a best man goes all the way to the days of marriage by capture among Anglo-Saxon tribesmen. It was too dangerous for a man seeking a mate to attempt the heist solo, so he brought along a comrade (usually a brother who was a skilled swordsman) to help fight off angry relatives or to create a diversion while be grabbed the maiden and rode off on horseback. The best man also helped protect the couple from being found by the bride’s family before they consummated the marriage; today, this custom translates into last-minute help in getting the couple off on their honeymoon. As for bridesmaids, their origin stems from a perception of spiritual danger: In early European society, it was believed that evil spirits would try to ruin the happiness of the bride and groom. To fool the demons, the bride and her bridesmaids dressed alike, making it harder to identify the bride (the same went for the groom’s side). This ruse also proved useful for fooling ex-suitors or a groom attempting to spirit away the bride without making it legal. By the end of the Middle Ages, the bride’s attire stood out from the bridesmaids’ dresses, but the custom of having the attendants dress alike remains. To this day, however, the groomsmen dress nearly identically to the groom- but that’s probably the result of a lack of fashion options for men.
Until the Middle Ages, wedding were announced by town criers. Once weddings started becoming invitation only affairs, noblemen and wealthy people turned to monks to create handwritten invitations. The monks’ elegant calligraphy (some were even commissioned to illustrate drawings) made the invitation a true work of art and still has this affect today. After the invention of the printing press, copper plates were etched with typefaces designed to mimic the monks’ calligraphy styles, and the engraved invitation was born. In fact, some of the fonts that remain popular today, including Antique Roman, Shaded Roman, and Fancy Gothic, closely followed the monks’ calligraphy. The slip of tissue paper found on top of the wedding invitation originated because ink use to be oil based. The ink would take too long to dry so sticking the tissue on top was a way to go ahead and send out the invitation without having the ink smear. For some reason this tradition stuck even though we use water-based ink now which dries much faster. The inner envelope came about duringthe Victorian era. Streets were muddy and outer envelopes often got dirty in transit. Once it arrived at someone’s home, their servant would remove the invitation from its outer envelope and place the pristine inner envelope on a silver tray fro the mistress of the household. – This explains why the inner envelope does not have the address and not sealed.
The Wedding FavorFavors have been associated with weddings for centuries. Over the years, biscuits, sweet rolls, knotted ribbons, floral nosegays, and mementos like scarves and gloves have all had their moments in the spotlight. Elizabethan brides would sew colored ribbons (actually called “favours”) onto their gowns, each color representing a different kind of luck. Guests were so eager to grab a little luck for themselves that they would swipe the ribbons, and in their frenzy, sometimes rip the bride’s dress. It wasn’t long before protective mothers-of-the-bride and bridesmaids staged an end run: They began to carry baskets of favors (usually knotted ribbons) so that guests could help themselves. When it comes to the most enduring favor of all time, Jordan almonds-pastel, candy coated, and tied in tulle- win the prize. Why almonds? Their bittersweet flavor represents the bitter and the sweet in life; coating them in sugar is a ploy to tip the future toward the sweet. At Italian weddings, five almonds are given to each guest, representing health, wealth, happiness, fertility, and longevity for the bride and groom. Traditionally, the five almonds are wrapped in tulle, a reference to the bride’s veil.
A Wreath on a Door
Not only does it make guests feel welcomed and a door look decorated- it is symbolic. A circle is an ancient emblem of endless love, and a wreath announces a special occasion.
Not only does it make guests feel welcomed and a door look decorated- it is symbolic. A circle is an ancient emblem of endless love, and a wreath announces a special occasion.
The tradition of throwing rice at the bride and groom as they exit the church actually stems from an ancient fertility rite. The traditions of tossing the bouquet and garter date back to the fourteenth century. As different as they seem today, they share the same roots. Any piece of the bride’s attire was considered lucky, so guests were eager to claim their own bit of good fortune. Overeager well-wishes would rush the bride to grab at her bouquet, so to protect themselves from a mauling, brides started preemptively tossing their bouquets to the crowd. The garter probably came from the “bedding ceremony.” Guests would accompany the newlyweds to their bedchamber, and the groom’s friends would try to remove the bride’s garters. To avoid being groped by a bunch of drunk men, brides began tossing their garters in their direction.
Marriage License
The required marriage license was established by the Marriage Act of 1753, also known as Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, in England and Wales. Marriage licenses existed before 1753, but they weren’t mandatory. In a move to prevent clandestine marriages and bigamy, the Marriage Act abolished common-law marriage. It mandated that banns, the wedding announcements of the time, be published, that the couple obtain a marriage license, and that the marriage take place in a church (with exceptions for Jews and Quakers). Parental consent was also required if either member of the couple was under twenty-one. Marriages from then on were officially recorded, as they eventually would be across North America, making it easier to determine if someone attempting to get married was already committed to another.
Prenups
Prenuptial agreements sound like a modern invention designed to protect wealthy men from gold diggers, but they actually date back centuries. They were most often associated with protecting a woman’s property so it wouldn’t automatically belong to the man. In Colonial America, such agreements were also used to protect widows who remarried.
The Honeymoon
The tradition of the honeymoon goes back centuries, but it wasn’t always quite so romantic. In the days of marriage by capture, the groom absconded with his bride, and then hid out with her in a secret location until the angry family gave up looking for her. The hiding-out period lasted about a month, the known as a “moon.” In Northern European cultures, the couple drank mead or a similar fermented honey concoction every day for the first month (moon) of marriage, and this is commonly believed to account for the origin of the word honeymoon. The mead was thought to aid in conception (probably by getting the nervous teenage bride drunk), but it was also a symbol of the sweetness of a new union.
Prenups
Prenuptial agreements sound like a modern invention designed to protect wealthy men from gold diggers, but they actually date back centuries. They were most often associated with protecting a woman’s property so it wouldn’t automatically belong to the man. In Colonial America, such agreements were also used to protect widows who remarried.
The tradition of the honeymoon goes back centuries, but it wasn’t always quite so romantic. In the days of marriage by capture, the groom absconded with his bride, and then hid out with her in a secret location until the angry family gave up looking for her. The hiding-out period lasted about a month, the known as a “moon.” In Northern European cultures, the couple drank mead or a similar fermented honey concoction every day for the first month (moon) of marriage, and this is commonly believed to account for the origin of the word honeymoon. The mead was thought to aid in conception (probably by getting the nervous teenage bride drunk), but it was also a symbol of the sweetness of a new union.
