Gilded Age Wedding Etiquette Customs

“Only recently have we adopted the English custom of displaying the wedding gifts, and this is done just two days before the marriage, in the library, and a luncheon is given or refreshments served to those bidden to view the jewels and silver, etc…” – Depiction of a Ducal Wedding –The marriage of the Duke of Portland and Miss Dallas-Yorke at St. Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, which in 1889 as a fashionable church for weddings, shared the honours with St. George’s, Hanover Square – Image source, Pinterest

New Wedding Etiquette

It is No Longer Correct to Collect an Elaborate Trousseau 

Until this season, brides-elect never appeared at any social gathering of importance after their wedding cards were issued. That rule is now a dead letter, and up to the day before her wedding a young woman is seen everywhere. Of course, this is the natural result of the recent and reasonable revolt against putting together an elaborate trousseau. 

Smart girls in New York society, who are marrying this Spring, have provided themselves with suitable wardrobes for the season and nothing more, and this, with first getting of the wedding dress, has left them time and strength for all the passing gayeties of the moment. Another new and interesting point in the present busy hymeneal season is the early sending out of invitations. 

Cards are posted just a month before the day of the wedding, and a rule somehow has arisen ordaining that directly on receipt of the invitation the wedding present must be sent, or within four days after receiving the invitation. By this means the bride is not troubled with the straggling in of gifts up to the very day of the ceremony, and a heavy demand on her vocabulary of thanks all in the week preceding her marriage and maybe the week after. 

There is also another deep-laid design in sending out invitations so early. A bride who posts her cards four weeks before the great day fully expects her friends to call upon her promptly, and by skillful conversation acquire a pretty clear notion of what she really wants in the way of a gift. Relatives and intimate friends are expected to openly solicit her wishes on that point, or you can take aside her mother, who knows the young lady's wishes, and will considerately give helpful tips in silver, bric-a-brac, pictures, jewelry, etc…

To her really close friends a girl, of course, writes notes announcing her engagement, and expecting in return not only congratulations, but an engagement souvenir. By men the occasion can be marked with flowers, but by women the memento now takes the form of a pitcher. In glass, gold, silver, pewter and all the varieties of porcelain these pitchers are given, nearly all of them small and engraved or painted with some appropriate sentiment expressing good wishes. The little jug is always sent full of flowers or bonbons, and the giving of one of these, when the engagement is announced, by no means absolves the giver from the duty and expense of a wedding present. 

Only recently have we adopted the English custom of displaying the wedding gifts, and this is done just two days before the marriage, in the library, and a luncheon is given or refreshments served to those bidden to view the jewels and silver, etc… Everybody who has contributed a gift, of course, is asked, and the invitations consist only of the young lady's visiting card, on which is written below her name the words at home, then in the left-hand corner, to view the wedding gifts from 4 to 6. Every one is supposed to bring his or her card along and turn it into the servant at the door as a voucher of one’s identity. – Stockton Mail, 1899

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia