Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗
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more hastily procured gifts; rare specimens of china, little
paintings, ornaments for the person—all, all are in order.
A present is generally packed where it is bought, and sent with
the giver’s card from the shop to the bride directly. She should
always acknowledge its arrival by a personal note written by
herself. A young bride once gave mortal offence by not thus
acknowledging her gifts. She said she had so many that she could
not find time to write the notes, which was naturally considered
boastful and most ungracious.
Gifts which owe their value to the personal taste or industry of
the friend who sends are particularly complimentary. A piece of
embroidery, a painting, a water-color, are most flattering gifts,
as they betoken a long and predetermined interest.
No friend should be deterred from sending a small present, one not
representing a money value, because other and richer people can
send a more expensive one. Often the little gift remains as a most
endearing and useful souvenir.
As for showing the wedding gifts, that is a thing which must be
left to individual taste. Some people disapprove of it, and
consider it ostentatious; others have a large room devoted to the
display of the presents, and it is certainly amusing to examine
them.
As for the conduct of the betrothed pair during their engagement,
our American mammas are apt to be somewhat more lenient in their
views of the liberty to be allowed than are the English. With the
latter, no young lady is allowed to drive alone with her fianc�;
there must be a servant in attendance. No young lady must visit in
the family of her fianc�, unless he has a mother to receive her.
Nor is she allowed to go to the theatre alone with him, or to
travel under his escort, to stop at the same hotel, or to relax
one of those rigid rules which a severe chaperon would enforce;
and it must be allowed that this severe and careful attention to
appearances is in the best taste.
As for the engagement-ring, modern fashion prescribes a diamond
solitaire, which may range in price from two hundred and fifty to
two thousand dollars. The matter of presentation is a secret
between the engaged pair.
Evening weddings do not differ from day weddings essentially,
except that the bridegroom wears evening dress.
If the wedding is at home, the space where the bridal party is to
stand is usually marked off by a ribbon, and the clergyman comes
down in his robes before the bridal pair; they face him, and he
faces the company. Hassocks are prepared for them to kneel upon.
After the ceremony the clergyman retires, and the bridal party
take his place, standing to receive their friends’
congratulations.
Should there be dancing at a wedding, it is proper for the bride
to open the first quadrille with the best man, the groom dancing
with the first bridesmaid. It is not, however, very customary for
a bride to dance, or for dancing to occur at an evening wedding,
but it is not a bad old custom.
After the bridal pair return from their wedding-tour, the
bridesmaids each give them a dinner or a party, or show some
attention, if they are so situated that they can do so. The
members of the two families, also, each give a dinner to the young
couple.
It is now a very convenient and pleasant custom for the bride to
announce with her wedding-cards two or more reception days during
the winter after her marriage, on which her friends can call upon
her. The certainty of finding a bride at home is very pleasing. On
these occasions she does not wear her wedding-dress, but receives
as if she had entered society as one of its members. The wedding
trappings are all put away, and she wears a dark silk, which may
be as handsome as she chooses. As for wearing her wedding-dress to
balls or dinners after her marriage, it is perfectly proper to do
so, if she divests herself of her veil and her orange-blossoms.
The bride should be very attentive and conciliatory to all her
husband’s friends, They will look with interest upon her from the
moment they hear of the engagement, and it is in the worst taste
for her to show indifference to them.
Quiet weddings, either in church or at the house, are very much
preferred by some families. Indeed, the French, from whom we have
learned many—and might learn more—lessons of grace and good
taste, infinitely prefer them.
For a quiet wedding the bride dresses in a travelling dress and
bonnet, and departs for her wedding-tour. It is the custom in
England, as we have said, for the bride and groom to drive off in
their own carriage, which is dressed with white ribbons, the
coachman and groom wearing white bouquets, and favors adorning
the horses’ ears, and for them to take a month’s honeymoon. There
also the bride (if she be Hannah Rothschild or the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts) gives her bridesmaids very elegant presents, as a
locket or a bracelet, while the groom gives the best man a
scarf-pin or some gift. The American custom is not so universal.
However, either bride or groom gives something to the bridesmaid
and a scarf-pin to each usher. Thus a wedding becomes a very
expensive and elaborate affair, which quiet and economical people
are sometimes obliged to avoid.
After the marriage invitations are issued, the lady does not
appear in public.
The period of card-leaving after a wedding is not yet definitely
fixed. Some authorities say ten days, but that in a crowded city,
and with an immense acquaintance, would be quite impossible.
If only invited to the church, many ladies consider that they
perform their whole duty by leaving a card sometime during the
winter, and including the young couple in their subsequent
invitations. Very rigorous people call, however, within ten days,
and if invited to the house, the call is still more imperative,
and should be made soon after the wedding.
But if a young couple do not send their future address, but only
invite one to a church-wedding, there is often a very serious
difficulty in knowing where to call, and the first visit must be
indefinitely postponed until they send cards notifying their
friends of their whereabouts.
Wedding invitations require no answer. But people living at a
distance, who cannot attend the wedding, should send their cards
by mail, to assure the hosts that the invitation has been
received. The usual form for wedding-cards is this:
Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Chapman
request your presence at the
marriage of their daughter, on Wednesday evening,
November fourth, at eight o’clock.
Grace Church.
The card of the young lady, that of her intended husband, and
another card to the favored—
At Home
after the ceremony,
7 East Market Street—
is also enclosed.
People with a large acquaintance cannot always invite all their
friends, of course, to a wedding reception, and therefore invite
all to the church. Sometimes people who are to give a small
wedding at home request an answer to the wedding invitation; in
that case, of course, an answer should be sent, and people should
be very careful not to ignore these flattering invitations. Any
carelessness is inexcusable when so important an event is on the
tapis. Bridesmaids, if prevented by illness or sudden
bereavement from officiating, should notify the bride as soon as
possible, as it is a difficult thing after a bridal cort�ge is
arranged to reorganize it.
As to the wedding-tour, it is no longer considered obligatory, nor
is the seclusion of the honeymoon demanded. A very fashionable
girl who married an Englishman last summer at Newport returned in
three days to take her own house at Newport, and to receive and
give out invitations. If the newly married pair thus begin
housekeeping in their own way, they generally issue a few “At
Home” cards, and thereby open an easy door for future
hospitalities. Certainly the once perfunctory bridal tour is no
longer deemed essential, and the more sensible fashion exists of
the taking of a friend’s house a few miles out of town for a
month.
If the bridal pair go to a watering-place during their early
married days, they should be very careful of outward display of
tenderness.
Such exhibitions in the cars or in public places as one often
sees, of the bride laying her head on her husband’s shoulder,
holding hands, or kissing, are at once vulgar and indecent. All
public display of an affectionate nature should be sedulously
avoided. The affections are too sacred for such outward showing,
and the lookers-on are in a very disagreeable position. The French
call love-making l’…… deux, and no egotism is agreeable.
People who see a pair of young doves cooing in public are apt to
say that a quarrel is not far off. It is possible for a lover to
show every attention, every assiduity, and not to overdo his
demonstrations. It is quite possible for the lady to be fond of
her husband without committing the slightest offence against good
taste.
The young couple are not expected, unless Fortune has been
exceptionally kind, to be immediately responsive in the matter of
entertainments. The outer world is only too happy to entertain
them. Nothing can be more imprudent than for a young couple to
rush into expenditures which may endanger their future happiness
and peace of mind, nor should they feel that they are obliged at
once to return the dinners and the parties given to them. The time
will come, doubtless, when they will be able to do so.
But the announcement of a day on which the bride will receive her
friends is almost indispensable. The refreshments on these
occasions should not exceed tea and cake, or, at the most, punch,
tea, chocolate, and cakes, which may stand on a table at one end
of the room, or may be handed by a waiter. Bouillon, on a cold day
of winter, is also in order, and is perhaps the most serviceable
of all simple refreshments. For in giving a “four-o’clock tea,” or
several day receptions, a large entertainment is decidedly vulgar.
CHAPTER XIV.
GOLD, SILVER, AND TIN WEDDINGS.
Very few people have the golden opportunity of living together for
fifty years in the holy estate of matrimony. When they have
overcome in so great a degree the many infirmities of the flesh,
and the common incompatibility of tempers, they deserve to be
congratulated, and to have a wedding festivity which shall be as
ceremonious as the first one, and twice as impressive. But what
shall we give them?
The gifts of gold must be somewhat circumscribed, and therefore
the injunction, so severe and so unalterable, which holds good at
tin and silver weddings, that no presents must be given of any
other metal than that designated by the day, does not hold good at
a golden wedding. A card printed in gold letters, announcing that
John Anderson and Mary Brown were married, for instance, in 1830,
and will celebrate their golden wedding in 1880, is generally the
only golden manifestation. One of the cards recently issued reads
in this way:
1831. 1881.
_Mr. and Mrs. John Anderson,
At Home November twenty-first, 1881,
Golden Wedding,
17 Carmichael Street,
at eight o’clock._
All done in gold, on white, thick English paper, that is nearly
all the exhibition of gold necessary at a golden wedding, unless
some friend gives the aged bride a present of jewellery. The bride
receives her children and grandchildren dressed in some article
which she wore at her first wedding, if any remain. Sometimes a
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