French Wedding Customs and Etiquette

Victorian inspired white gowns, were still popular in Paris, even after WWI

French marriage customs are now well known, so far as they relate to first marriages, but as regards second marriages very little has yet been written. Perhaps these marriages lack the romantic element which in all human affairs is the sauce piquante that "lifts the flavor." This may explain why so little notice is taken of them. There is a decided disposition in France to regard those who marry en secondes noces as hardened sinners or as imbeciles undeserving of sympathy. 

The popular sentiment on the subject is to the effect that a person has only the right to be born once, to marry once and to die once. Those who show a wish to undergo any of these operations twice are suspected of gourmandize. It must be admitted, however, that public opinion respecting second marriages is much more generous with regard to the man than with regard to the woman. There is a social and religious prejudice against the second marriage of women. especially when these have reached middle age and have children.

The religious prejudice was remarkably illustrated a few years ago by Pere Didon who, in the course of the memorable series of sermons that he preached in Paris, and which obtained for him the severe censure of the general of the Dominicans and temporary relegation to a little island in the Mediterranean as his penance, attacked the practice of the second marriage of women with a vehemence that profoundly astonished the congregation, among whom were some people who considered the sermon a grossly personal attack. 

The eloquent Dominican had not done what the Latin proverb advises the discreet cobbler to do he had gone beyond his last. He had no authority to use a pulpit for abusing women who entered for the second time the matrimonial state. The sermon was printed in extenso in some of the papers, and made a prodigious commotion. People asked why the Dominican father was so hard upon women and so lenient toward men. The discussion took a turn that was not exactly theological. Now, although Pere Didon was very imprudent in expressing his opinions so strongly, he nevertheless caught up and put into words a floating religious idea, and one that is by no means of recent date.— Paris Correspondent, Boston Transcript, 1887

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