GENERAL AND MRS. BROUNLOW
Request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter
EXCLAIRMONDE
to
MR. GERALD FITZGERALD,
on Thursday, June 16th, at 12 o'clock,
St. Peter's Church.
In asking a young lady to be her bridesmaid, the bride is supposed to
be prompted by claims of relationship or friendship, although fashion
and wealth and other considerations often influence these invitations.
As for the ushers, they must be unmarried men, and are expected to
manage all matters at the church.
Music should play softly during the entrance of the family, before the
service. The mother of the bride, and her nearest relatives, precede
her into the church, and are seated before she enters, unless the
mother be a widow and gives the bride away. The ceremony should be
conducted with great dignity and composure on all sides; for
exhibitions of feeling in public are in the worst possible taste. At
the reception, the bride's mother yields her place as hostess for the
nonce, and is addressed after the bride.
After two hours of receiving her friends, the young wife goes upstairs
to put on her dress for the journey, which may be of any colour but
black. Perhaps this is the time for a few tears, as she kisses mamma
good-by. She comes down, with her mother and sisters, meets the groom
in the hall, and dispenses the flowers of her bouquet to the smiling
maidens, each of whom struggles for a flower.
The parents of the bride send announcement cards to persons not
invited to the wedding.
Dinners to the young pair succeed each other in rapid succession. For
the first three months the art of entertaining is stretched to its
uttermost.
A widow, in marrying again, should not use the name or initials of her
late husband. If she was Mary Steward, and had married Mr. Hamilton,
and being his widow, wishes to marry James Constable, her cards should
read:
MR. AND MRS. STEWARD
Request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter
MARY STEWARD-HAMILTON
to
MR. JAMES CONSTABLE.
If she is alone, she can invite in her own name as Mrs. Mary Steward
Hamilton; or better still, a friend sends out the cards in her own
name, with simply the cards of Mrs. Mary Steward Hamilton, and of the
gentleman whom she is to marry.
The custom of giving bridal presents has grown into an outrageous
abuse of a good thing. There has grown up a rivalry between families;
and the publicity of the whole thing, its notoriety and extravagance,
ought to be well rebuked.
At the wedding refreshment-table, the bride sometimes cuts the cake
and allows the young people to search for a ring, but this is rather
bad for the gloves.
At a country wedding, if the day is fine, little tables are set out on
the lawn. The ladies seat themselves, the gentlemen carry refreshments
to them. The piazzas can be decorated with autumn boughs, evergreens,
and flowers; the whole thing becomes a garden-party, and even the
family dogs should have a wreath of white flowers around their necks.
Much ill feeling is apt to be engendered by the distinction which is
inevitably made in leaving out the friends who feel that they were
entitled to an invitation to the house. It is better to offend no one
on so important an occasion.
Wedding-cards and wedding stationery should be simple, white without
glaze, and with no attempt at ornamentation.
It is proper for the bride to have her left hand bare as she walks to
the altar, as it saves her the trouble of taking off a long glove.
Child bridesmaids are very pretty and very much in favour. These
charming children, covered with flowers and looking very grave and
solemn, are the sweetest of heralds for a wedding procession.
There is not, however, much difficulty except when Protestant marries
Catholic. Such a marriage cannot be celebrated at the High Altar; it
leads to a house wedding which is in the minds of many much more
agreeable, as saving the bride the journey to church. In this matter,
one of individual preference of course, the large and liberal American
mind can have a very wide choice.
In France the couple must go to the _Mairie_, where an official in a
tricolour scarf, looking like Marat, marries them. This is especially
the case if husband or wife is a divorced person, the Catholic church
refusing to marry such. It is a curious fact, that in Catholic Italy a
civil marriage is the only legal marriage; therefore good Catholics
are all married twice. A mixed marriage in Catholic countries is very
difficult; but in our country, alas! the wedding knot can be untied as
easily as it is tied.
"This train waits twenty minutes for divorces" is a joke founded on
fact.
"What do _divorcées_ do with their wedding presents?" has been a
favourite conundrum of late, especially with those sent by the friends
of the husband.
If an evening wedding takes place in a church those who are asked to
the house afterwards should go without bonnets. Catholic ladies,
however, must always cover their heads in church; so they throw a
light lace or mantilla over the head.
It is not often that the bride dances at her own wedding, but there is
no reason why she should not.
"'Tis custom that makes cowards of us all." One brave girl was married
on a Saturday in May, thus violating all the old saws and
superstitions. She has been happy ever afterwards. Marriages in May
used to be said to lead to poverty. It is the month of Mary, the
Virgin, therefore Catholics object.
One still braver bride chose Friday; this is hangman's day, and also
the day of the crucifixion, therefore considered unlucky by the larger
portion of the human race.
However, marriage is lucky or unlucky as the blind goddess pleases; no
foresight of ours can make it a certainty. Sometimes two very doubtful
characters make each other better, and live happily; again two very
fine characters but help to sublimate each other's misery. Perhaps no
more hopeless picture of this failure was ever painted than the misery
of Caroline and Robert Elsmere, in that masterly novel which led you
nowhere.
There is a capital description of a French _bourgeoise_ wedding in one
of Daudet's novels:--
"The least details of this important day were forever engraved on
Risler's mind.
"He saw himself at daybreak pacing his bachelor chamber, already
shaved and dressed, with two pairs of white gloves in his pocket. Then
came the gala carriages, and in the first one, the one with white
horses, white reins, and a lining of yellow satin, his bride's veil
floated like a cloud.
"Then the entrance to the church, two by two, with this white cloud
always at their head, floating, light, gleaming; the organ, the
verger, the sermon of the _curé_, the tapers twinkling like jewels,
the spring toilets, and all the world in the sacristie--the little
white cloud lost, engulfed, surrounded, embraced, while the groom
shook hands with the representatives of the great Parisian firms
assembled in his honour; and the grand swell of the organ at the end,
more solemn because the doors of the church were wide open so that the
whole quarter took part in the family ceremony; the noises of the
street as the cortège passed out, the exclamations of the
lookers-on,--a burnisher in a lustring apron crying aloud, 'The groom
is not handsome, but the bride is stunning,'--all this is what makes
one proud when he is a bridegroom.
"Then the breakfast at the works, in a room ornamented with hangings
and flowers; the stroll in the Bois, a concession to the bride's
mother, Madame Chèbe, who in her position as a Parisian _bourgeoise_
would not have considered her daughter married without the round of
the lake and a visit to the cascade; then the return for dinner just
as the lights were appearing on the Boulevard, where every one turned
to see the wedding party, a true, well-appointed party, as it passed
in a procession of liveried carriages to the very steps of the Café
Vefour.
"It was all like a dream.
"Now, dulled by fatigue and happiness, the worthy Risler looked
dreamily at the great table of twenty-five covers, with a horseshoe at
each end. Around it were well-known, smiling faces in whose eyes he
seemed to see his own happiness reflected. Little waves of
conversation from the different groups drifted across the table; faces
were turned toward one another. You could see here the white cuffs of
a black suit behind a basket of asclepias, here the laughing face of a
girl above a dish of confections. The faces of the guests were half
hidden behind the flowers and the dessert; all around the board were
gayety, light, and colour.
"Yes, Risler was happy.
"Aside from his brother Franz, all whom he loved were there. First and
foremost, facing him, was Sidonie,--yesterday the little Sidonie,
to-day his wife. She had laid aside her veil for dinner, she had
emerged from the white cloud.
"Now in her silken gown, white and simple, her charming face seemed
more clear and sweet under the carefully arranged bridal wreath.
"By the side of Risler sat Madame Chèbe, the mother of the bride, who
shone and glistened in a dress of green satin gleaming like a shield.
Since morning all the thoughts of the good woman had been as brilliant
as her robe. Every moment she had said to herself, 'My daughter is
marrying Fremont and Risler,'--because in her mind it was not Risler
whom her daughter married, but the whole establishment.
"All at once came that little movement among the guests that announces
their leaving the table,--the rustle of silks, the noise of chairs,
the last words of talk, laughter broken off. Then they all passed into
the grand _salon_, where those invited were arriving in crowds, and,
while the orchestra tuned their instruments, the men with glass in eye
paraded before the young girls all dressed in white and impatient to
begin."