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by Cheryl Miller
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Marry when the year is new,
Always loving, kind and true.
When February birds to mate
You may wed, nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow,
Joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can,
Joy for maiden and for man.
Marry in the month of May,
You will surely rue the day.
Marry when June roses blow,
Over land and see you'll go.
They who in July do wed
Must labor always for their bread.
Whoever wed in August be,
Many a change are sure to see.
Marry in September's shine,
Your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry,
Love will come, but riches tarry.
If you wed in bleak November
Only joy will come, remember.
When December's snows fall fast,
Marry, and true love will last.
 Ellye Howell Glover, 1907
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The ring for marriage within a year;
The penny for wealth, my dear;
The thimble for an old maid or bachelor born;
The button for sweethearts all forlorn.
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- My great
grandparents
- June 17, 1903
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In early Victorian
times, there were usually three wedding cakes--one elaborate cake, and two
smaller ones for the bride and groom. The cake was cut and boxed and given
to guests as they left. Traditionally the wedding cake was a dark, rich
fruitcake with ornate white frostings of scrolls, orange blossoms, etc.. The
bride and groom's cakes were not as elaborate. Hers was white cake, his
dark. It was cut into as many pieces as there were attendants and often
favors were baked inside for luck. Each charm had its own meaning.
This tradition died away with the century, as the bridesmaids did not wish
to soil their gloves looking for the favor. The cake the bride cut was not
eaten, rather it was packed away for the 25th wedding
anniversary.
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- The sentimental young woman who
puts a bit of the wedding
- cake under her pillow may have a
dream
- that will bring her good fortune.
-
Margaret E. Sangster, Good Manners
- for All Occasions,
1904
Precedents Set by Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria and her
daughters were responsible for many of our modern-day wedding traditions.
The queen and the
princesses were also responsible for the traditional, showy wedding cakes we
know today. The queen's own wedding cake weighed 3,000 pounds and measured nine
feet across. Created by the Buckingham Palace confectioner, Mr. Mawdett, it was
topped by a foot-high rendering of Britannia blessing the bride and groom -
whose figures had been carved from a block of ice.
The cake prepared for
Princess Victoria's wedding was seven feet high. While the cake at Princess
Louise's wedding in 1871 was only five feet high, it had been elaborately
decorated by Her Majesty's chief confectioner and had taken three months to
create. The base was embellished with white satin that bore the coats of arms of
the bride and groom, while the cake itself held wreathes of orange blossoms and
small vases containing the same flowers. Atop the cake stood doves drinking from
a fountain, four statues and a temple.
Additional Wedding Cake
Traditions
Many of us have
experienced a traditional wedding complete with a beautiful wedding cake –
crowned by a miniature bridal pair. These items were often saved, along with
other wedding memorabilia – often tucked away in a drawer.
The wedding cake is a
tradition almost as old as marriage itself. During ancient nuptials, offerings
of grain – symbolizing fertility and an abundance of food – were made to the
couple. The wedding guests actually threw wheat grains at the couple.
In later years, Romans
ground wheat into flour, combined it with salt and baked it into flat cakes –
which were more like hard biscuits than soft cakes. Attendants carried the
cakes in from of the bride. The bride and groom then ate some of the cakes,
but the rest were crumbled and tossed over the bride’s head. The custom of
throwing rice had its origin in this practice.
Wedding Customs
By the 18th century,
white became the standard wedding color. Fashion historians claim this was due
mainly to the fact that most gowns of the time were white; that white was the
color of formal fashion. In 1813, the first fashion plate of a white wedding
gown and veil appeared in the influential French Journal des Dames. From
that point onward, the style was set.
Among the Germanic Goths, a man
married a woman from within his own community. When women were in short supply,
he captured his bride-to-be from a neighboring village. The future bridegroom,
accompanied by a male companion, seized any young girl who had strayed from the
safety of her parental home. Our custom of a best man is a relic of that
two-man, strong-armed tactic; for such an important task, only the best man
would do.
The tradition that the bride
stand to the left of the groom was also more than meaningless etiquette. Among
the Northern European barbarians, a groom placed his captured bride on his left
to protect her, freeing his right hand, the sword hand, against sudden attack.
The origin and the significance
of the wedding ring is much disputed. One school of thought maintains that the
modern ring is symbolic of the fetters used by barbarians to tether a bride to
her captor's home. If that be true, today's double ring ceremonies fittingly
express the newfound equality of the sexes. The other school of thought focuses
on the first actual bands exchanged in a marriage ceremony. A finger ring was
first used in the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, around 2800 B.C. To
the Egyptians, a circle, having no beginning or ending, signified eternity - for
which marriage was binding.
The wedding cake was not always
eaten by the bride, it was originally thrown at her. It developed as one of the
many fertility symbols integral to the marriage ceremony.
Wheat, long a symbol of
fertility and prosperity, was one of the earliest grains to ceremoniously shower
new brides, and unmarried young women were expected to scramble for the grains
to ensure their own betrothals, as they do today for the bridal bouquet.
Today old shoes are tied to
newlywed's cars and no one asks why. Why, of all things, shoes? And why old
shoes? Originally, shoes were only one of many objects tossed at a bride to
wish her a bounty of children. In fact, shoes were preferred over the equally
traditional wheat and ride because from ancient times the foot was a powerful
phallic symbol. The preferred shoes for throwing at a bride - and later for
tying to the newlywed's car - were old ones strictly for economic reasons. Shoes
have never been inexpensive.
Continue to...
Wedding Customs
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