WEDDING WHIMSIES

Excerpts from PrescottWeddings.com “Making It Happen” (September, 2003)

• In 1215 Pope Innocent III declared that there should be an official waiting period before a couple married. This was the beginning of the present-day engagement tradition.
  
  
• Maximilian I, King of Germany, gave the first recorded engagement ring to Mary of Burgundy in 1477.
  
  
• “Bridal” derives from the English custom where the woman who was to be married was expected to brew ale for her wedding guests.
  
  
• The bachelor party may have begun in Sparta where the young man’s military friends gathered and feasted in his honor the night before the wedding. It was a formal farewell to his single days.
  
  
• In Colonial America, rings were thought of as frivolous. If a Bride got a ring at all, it was a thimble with the top cut off.
  
  
• It was illegal for Colonial Brides to wear veils or makeup because they were thought to create an illusion in the eyes of the Groom.
  
  
• Nellie Custis, granddaughter of Martha Washington, was the first to wear a white lace veil after her fiancé, Major Lawrence Lewis, aide to President Washington, complimented her when she stood behind a white lace curtain.
  
  
• The white wedding gown became fashionable after Queen Victoria wore one at her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840.
  
  
• The Bride stands to the Groom’s left because in Medieval times, the Groom and his Groomsmen needed to keep their sword hand free (always the right hand) to fend off attacks from those not wanting the wedding to take place and/or to keep an unwilling Bride by the Groom’s side.
  
  
• Tossing the bridal bouquet can be traced back to Roman times when the couple threw a torch to the wedding party. The French made this tradition safer in the 14th century by substituting flowers, adding that the one who caught the bouquet would be the first to marry.
  
  
• The “toast” originated from a French custom in which an actual piece of toasted bread was placed at the bottom of a glass filled with wine. At the wedding, the glass was passed around until it reached the Bride, who finished the wine and got the treat at the bottom, along with all of her guests’ good wishes.
  
  
• Honeymooners today follow a tradition originated by Teutonic newlyweds who drank wine made of honey and yeast from one full moon to the next.

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