Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗
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should say all your visiting list, or none. There is an unusual
feeling about being left out at a wedding, and no explanation that
it is “a small and not general invitation” seems to satisfy those
who are thus passed over. It is much better to offend no one on so
important an occasion.
Wedding cards and wedding stationery have not altered at all. The
simple styles are the best. The bridal linen should be marked with
the maiden name of the bride.
If brides could only find out some way to let their friends know
where they are to be found after marriage it, would be a great
convenience.
The newest style of engagement ring is a diamond and a ruby, or a
diamond and a sapphire, set at right angles or diagonally. Bangles
with the bridal monogram set in jewels are very pretty, and a
desirable ornament for the bridesmaids’ gifts, serving as a
memento and a particularly neat ornament. They seem to have
entirely superseded the locket. The bride’s name cut in silver or
gold serves for a lace pin, and is quite effective.
CHAPTER XI.
SUMMER WEDDINGS.
A new fashion in the engraving of the wedding notepaper is the
first novelty of the early summer wedding. The card is entirely
discarded, and sheets of notepaper, with the words of the
invitation in very fine running script, are now universally
used, without crests or ciphers. We are glad to see that the very
respectful form of invitation, “Mr. and Mrs. John H. Brown request
the honor of your presence,” etc., is returning to fashionable
favor. It never should have gone out. Nothing is more
self-respecting than respect, and when we ask our friends to visit
us we can well afford to be unusually courteous. The brief, curt,
and not too friendly announcement, “Mr. and Mrs. John H. Brown
request your presence,” etc., etc., may well yield to the much
more elegant and formal compliment.
From high social authority in New York we have an invitation much
simpler and more cordial, also worthy of imitation: “Mr. and Mrs.
Winslow Appleblossom request the pleasure of your company at the
wedding reception of their daughter, on Tuesday afternoon June the
sixteenth.” This is without cards or names, presuming that the
latter will follow later on.
Another very comprehensive and useful announcement of a wedding,
from a lady living out of town, conveys, however, on one sheet of
paper the desired information of where to find the bride:
_Mrs. Seth Osborne
announces the marriage of her daughter
Margu�rite
to
Mr. Joseph Wendon,
on
Wednesday, September the ninth,
at
Bristol, Connecticut.
At Home after January first,
at 758 Wood Street._
This card of announcement is a model of conciseness, and answers
the oft-repeated question, “Where shall we go to find the married
couple next winter?”
In arranging the house for the spring wedding the florists have
hit upon a new device of having only one flower in masses; so we
hear of the apple-blossom wedding, the lilac wedding, the lily
wedding, the rose wedding and the daffodil wedding, the violet
wedding, and the daisy wedding. So well has this been carried out
that at a recent daisy wedding the bride’s lace and diamond
ornaments bore the daisy pattern, and each bridesmaid received a
daisy pin with diamond centre.
This fashion of massing a single flower has its advantages when
that flower is the beautiful feathery lilac, as ornamental as a
plume; but it is not to be commended when flowers are as sombre as
the violet, which nowadays suggests funerals. Daffodils are lovely
and original, and apple-blossoms make a hall in a Queen Anne
mansion very decorative. No one needs to be told that roses look
better for being massed, and it is a pretty conceit for a bride to
make the flower which was the ornament of her wedding her flower
for life.
The passion for little girls as bridesmaids receives much
encouragement at the spring and summer weddings. One is reminded
of the children weddings of the fifteenth century, as these
darlings, wearing Kate Greenaway hats, walk up the aisle,
preceding the bride. The young brother of the bride, a mere boy,
who, in the fatherless condition of his sister, recently gave her
away, also presented a touching picture. It has become a fashion
now to invoke youth as well as age to give the blessings once
supposed to be alone at the beck and call of those whom Time had
sanctified.
The bridal dresses are usually of white satin and point lace, a
preference for tulle veils being very evident. A pin for the veil,
with a diamond ornament, and five large diamonds hanging by little
chains, makes a very fine effect, and is a novelty. The groom at a
recent wedding gave cat’s-eyes set round with diamonds to his
ushers for scarf pins, the cat’s-eye being considered a very lucky
stone.
The ushers and the groom wear very large boutonnieres of
stephanotis and gardenias, or equally large bunches of
lilies-of-the-valley, in their button-holes.
At one of the country weddings of the spring a piper in full
Scotch costume discoursed most eloquent music on the lawn during
the wedding ceremony. This was a compliment to the groom, who is a
captain in a Highland regiment.
A prevailing fashion for wedding presents is to give heavy pieces
of furniture, such as sideboards, writing-tables, cabinets, and
pianos.
A favorite dress for travelling is heliotrope cashmere, with
bonnet to match. For a dark bride nothing is more becoming than
dark blue tailormade with white vest and sailor collar. Gray
cashmere with steel passementerie has also been much in vogue. A
light gray mohair, trimmed with lace of the same color, was also
much admired.
We have mentioned the surroundings of the brides, but have not
spoken of the background. A screen hung with white and purple
lilacs formed the background of one fair bride, a hanging curtain
of Jacqueminot roses formed the appropriate setting of another.
Perhaps the most regal of these floral screens was one formed of
costly orchids, each worth a fortune. One of the most beautiful of
the spring wedding dresses was made of cream-white satin over a
tulle petticoat, the tulle being held down by a long diagonal band
of broad pearl embroidery, the satin train trimmed with bows of
ribbon in true-lovers’ knots embroidered in seed-pearls; a shower
of white lilacs trimmed one side of the skirt.
Another simple dress was made of white silk, trimmed with old
Venetian point, the train of striped ivory point and white satin
depending � la Watteau from the shoulders, and fastened at the
point of the waist. At the side three large pleats formed a
drapery, which was fringed with orange-blossoms.
From England we hear of the most curious combinations as to
travelling-dresses. Biscuit-colored canvas, embroidered around the
polonaise in green and gold, while the skirt is edged with a broad
band of green velvet. The new woollen laces of all colors make a
very good effect in the “going-away dress” of a bride.
We are often asked by summer brides whether they should wear
bonnets or round hats for their travelling-dress. We
unhesitatingly say bonnets. A very pretty wedding bonnet is made
of lead-colored beads without foundation, light and transparent;
strings of red velvet and a bunch of red plums complete this
bonnet. Gold-colored straw, trimmed with gold-brown velvet and
black net, makes a pretty travelling-bonnet. Openwork black straw
trimmed with black lace and red roses, very high in the crown,
with a “split front,” is a very becoming and appropriate bonnet
for a spring costume.
A pretty dress for the child bridemaids is a pink faille slip
covered with dotted muslin, not tied in at the waist, and the
broadest of high Gainsborough hats of pale pink silk with immense
bows, from the well-known pictures of Gainsborough’s pretty women.
But if a summer bride must travel in a bonnet, there is no reason
that her trousseau should not contain a large Leghorn hat, the
straw caught up on the back in long loops, the spaces between
filled in with bows of heliotrope ribbon. The crown should be
covered with white ostrich tips. This is a very becoming hat for a
lawn party.
It would be a charming addition to our well-known and somewhat
worn-out Wedding-March, always played as the bride walks up the
aisle, if a chorus of choir boys would sing an epithalamium, as is
now done in England. These fresh young voices hailing the youthful
couple would be in keeping with the child bridesmaids and the
youthful brothers. Nay, they would suggest those frescoes of the
Italian villas where Hymen and Cupid, two immortal boys, always
precede the happy pair.
It is a pleasant part of weddings everywhere that the faithful
domestics who have loved the bride from childhood are expected to
assist by their presence at the ceremony, each wearing a wedding
favor made by the fair hand of the bride herself. An amusing
anecdote is told of a Yorkshire coachman, who, newly arrived in
America, was to drive the bride to church. Not knowing him,
particularly as he was a new addition to the force, the bride sent
him his favor by the hands of her maid. But Yorkshire decided
stoutly against receiving such a vicarious offering, and remarked,
“Tell she I’d rather ‘ave it from she.” And so “she” was obliged
to come down and affix the favor to his livery coat, or he would
have resigned the “ribbons.” The nurses, the cook, the maids, and
the men-servants in England always expect a wedding favor and a
small gratuity at a wedding, and in this country should be
remembered by a box of cake, and possibly by a new dress, cap, or
bonnet, or something to recall the day.
The plan of serving the refreshments at a buffet all through the
reception retains its place as the most convenient and appropriate
of forms. The wedding breakfast, where toasts are drunk and
speeches made, is practicable in England, but hardly here, where
we are not to the manner born. The old trained domestics who serve
such a feast can not be invented at will in America, so that it is
better to allow our well-filled tables to remain heavily laden, as
they are, with dainties which defy competition, served by a corps
of waiters.
The pretty plan of cutting the bride cake and hunting for a ring
has been long exploded, as the bridesmaids declare that it ruins
their gloves, and that in these days of eighteen buttons it is too
much trouble to take off and put on a glove for the sake of
finding a ring in a bit of greasy pastry. However, it might
supplement a wedding supper.
CHAPTER XII.
AUTUMN WEDDINGS.
The first thing which strikes the eye of the fortunate person who
is invited to see the bridal gifts is the predominance of
silver-ware. We have now passed the age of bronze and that of
brass, and silver holds the first place of importance. Not only
the coffee and tea sets, but the dinner sets and the whole
furniture of the writing-table, and even brooms and brushes, are
made with repouss� silver handles—the last, of course, for the
toilette, as for dusting velvet, feathers, bonnets, etc.
The oxidized, ugly, discolored silver is not so fashionable as it
was, and the beautiful, bright, highly polished silver, with its
own natural and unmatchable color, has come in. The salvers afford
a splendid surface for a monogram, which is now copied from the
old Dutch silver, and bears many a true-lovers’ knot, and every
sort and kind of ornamentation; sometimes
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