Gilded Age Wedding Etiquette

In most cases, the after-cards are ordered with the other cards, and the bride’s mother pays for them. But if they are ordered after the marriage the groom may pay for these as he would pay for his wife’s ordinary expenses. Still it is stricter etiquette that even these should be paid for by the bride’s family.

Wedding Etiquette

Duties and Preparations of Contracting Parties

The etiquette of weddings is remotely founded on the early savage history of mankind and which bears fruit in our later and more complex civilization, still reminding us of the past. In early and in savage days, the man sought his bride heroically and carried her off by force. It is still a theory that the bride is thus carried off. Thus the long-cherished theory bears fruit in the English ceremonial, where the only carriage furnished by the groom is one in which he drives the bride away to the spending of the honeymoon, up to that time he has had no rights of proprietorship. Even this is not allowed in America among fashionable people, the bride’s father sending them in his own carriage on thee first stage of their journey. 

It is not etiquette for the groom to furnish anything for his own wedding, but the ring and a bouquet for the bride, presents for the bridesmaids and the best man, and some token to the ushers. He pays the clergyman. He should not pay for the cards, the carriages and entertainments, or anything connected with the wedding. This is decided in the high court of etiquette. This is the province of the bride’s family and should be insisted upon. 

At the altar, the groom, if he is a millionaire, makes his wife his equal by saying: “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” Until he has uttered these words she has no claim on his purse for clothes or cards, or household furnishing, or anything but those articles that come under the head of such gifts as it is a lover’s privilege to make. 

A very precise old-time aristocrat of New York broke her daughter's engagement to a gentleman because he brought her a dress from Paris. She said if he did not know enough not to give her daughter clothes while she was under her roof, he should not have her. This is a remark which applies at once to that liberty permitted to engaged couples in rural neighborhoods where a young girl is allowed to go on a journey at her lover’s expense. 

A girl’s natural protectors should know better than to allow this. They know that her purity is her chief attraction to man, and that a certain coyness and virginal freshness are the dowry she should bring her future husband. Suppose that this engagement is broken off ? How will she be accepted by another lover after having enjoyed the hospitality of the first? Would it not make a disagreeable feeling between the two men, although No. 2 might have perfect respect for the girl? 

It is the privilege of the bride to name the wedding day, and of her father and mother to pay for her trousseau. After the wedding invitations are issued she does not appear in public. The members of the bride’s family go to the church before the bride. The bridegroom and his best man await them at the altar. The bride comes last, with her father or brother, who is to give her away. She is joined at the altar step by her fiance, who takes her hand, and then she becomes his for life. All these trifles mean much, as any one can learn who goes through the painful details of a divorce suit. 

Now, when the circle of friends on both sides is very extensive, it has of late become customary to send invitations to some who are not called to wedding breakfast to attend the ceremony at the church. This sometimes takes the place of issuing cards. No one thinks of calling on the newly married who has not received either an invitation to the ceremony at the church or cards after their establishment in their new home. 

In most cases, the after-cards are ordered with the other cards, and the bride’s mother pays for them. But if they are ordered after the marriage the groom may pay for these as he would pay for his wife’s ordinary expenses. Still it is stricter etiquette that even these should be paid for by the bride’s family. People who are asked to the wedding, send cards to the house if they cannot attend, and, in any case, send or leave cards within ten days after, unless they are in very deep mourning, when a dispensation is granted them. 

The etiquette of a wedding at home does not differ at all from the etiquette of a wedding in church with regard to cards. A great confusion seems to exist in the minds of some as to whom to send their return cards on being invited to a wedding. Some ask: “Shall I send them to the bride, as I do not know her mother?’’ Certainly not; send them to whomsoever invites you. Afterward call on the bride or send her cards ; but the first and important card goes to the lady who gives the wedding. 

The order of the religious part of the ceremony is fixed by the church in which it occurs. The groom must call on the clergyman, see the organist, and make whatever arrangements the bride pleases; but all expenses, excepting the fee of the clergyman, are borne by the bride's family. 

A wedding invitation requires no answer, unless it is to a sit-down wedding breakfast. Cards left afterward are all-sufficient. The separate cards of the bride and groom are no longer included in the invitation. Nothing black in the way of dress, but the gentlemen’s coats is admissible at a wedding.— San Jose Herald, 1884

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