Etiquette - Emily Post (english novels for students TXT) 📗

may not include the clergyman who performed the ceremony. If a bishop or dean performed the ceremony, he is always included at this table and is placed at the left of the hostess, and his wife, if present, sits at the bride's father's left. Otherwise only especially close friends of the bride's parents are invited to this table.

The Wedding Cake

In addition to the big cake on the bride's table, there are at all weddings, near the front door so that the guests may each take one as they go home, little individual boxes of wedding cake, "black" fruit cake. Each box is made of white moiré or gros-grain paper, embossed in silver with the last initial of the groom intertwined with that of the bride and tied with white satin ribbon. At a sit-down breakfast the wedding cake boxes are sometimes put, one at each place, on the tables so that each guest may be sure of receiving one, and other "thoughtless" ones prevented from carrying more than their share away.

The Standing Breakfast Or Reception

The standing breakfast differs from the sit-down breakfast in service only. Instead of numerous small tables at which the guests are served with a course luncheon, a single long one is set in the dining-room. (The regular table pulled out to its farthest extent.) It is covered with a plain white damask cloth—or it may be of embroidered linen and lace insertion. In the center is usually a bowl or vase or other centerpiece, of white flowers. On it are piles of plates, stacks of napkins and rows of spoons and forks at intervals, making four or possibly six piles altogether. Always there are dishes filled with little fancy cakes, chosen as much for looks as for taste. There is usually a big urn at one end filled with bouillon and one at the other filled with chocolate or tea. In four evenly spaced places are placed two cold dishes such as an aspic of chicken, or ham mousse, or a terrine de foie gras, or other aspic. The hot dishes may be a boned capon, vol-au-vent of sweetbread and mushrooms, creamed oysters, chicken à la King, or chicken croquettes; or there may be cold cuts, or celery salad, in tomato aspic. Whatever the choice may be, there are two or three cold dishes and at least two hot. Whatever there is, must be selected with a view to its being easily eaten with a fork while the plate is held in the other hand! There are also rolls and biscuits, pâté de foie gras or lettuce and tomato sandwiches, the former made usually of split "dinner" rolls with pâté between, or thin sandwiches rolled like a leaf in which a moth has built a cocoon. Ices are brought in a little later, when a number of persons have apparently finished their "first course." Ice cream is quite as fashionable as individual "ices." It is merely that caterers are less partial to it because it has to be cut.

After-dinner coffee is put on a side table, as the champagne used to be. From now on there will probably be a bowl or pitchers of something with a lump of ice in it that can be ladled into glasses and become whatever those gifted with imagination may fancy.

Unless the wedding is very small, there is always a bride's table, decorated exactly as that described for a sit-down breakfast, and placed usually in the library, but there is no especial table for the bride's mother and her guests—or for anyone else.

The Bridal Party Eat

By the time the sit-down breakfast has reached its second course and the queue of arriving guests has dwindled and melted away, the bride and groom decide that it is time they too go to breakfast. Arm in arm they lead the way to their own table followed by the ushers and bridesmaids. The bride and groom always sit next to each other, she on his right; the maid of honor (or matron) is on his left, and the best man is on the right of the bride. Around the rest of the table come bridesmaids and ushers alternately. Sometimes one or two others—sisters of the bride or groom or intimate friends, who were not included in the wedding party, are asked to the table, and when there are no bridesmaids this is always the case.

The decoration of the table, the service, the food, is exactly the same whether the other guests are seated or standing. At dessert, the bride cuts the cake, and the bridesmaids and ushers find the luck pieces.

Dancing At The Wedding

On leaving their table, the bridal party join the dancing which by now has begun in the drawing-room where the wedding group received. The bride and groom dance at first together, and then each with bridesmaids or ushers or other guests. Sometimes they linger so long that those who had intended staying for the "going away" grow weary and leave—which is often exactly what the young couple want! Unless they have to catch a train, they always stay until the "crowd thins" before going to dress for their journey. At last the bride signals to her bridesmaids and leaves the room. They all gather at the foot of the stairs; about half way to the upper landing as she goes up, she throws her bouquet, and they all try to catch it. The one to whom it falls is supposed to be the next married. If she has no bridesmaids, she sometimes collects a group of other young girls and throws her bouquet to them.

Into Traveling Clothes

The bride goes up to the room that has always been hers, followed by her mother, sisters and bridesmaids, who stay with her while she changes into her traveling clothes. A few minutes after the bride has gone up-stairs, the groom goes to the room reserved for him, and changes into the ordinary sack suit which the best man has taken there for him before the ceremony. He does not wear his top hat nor his wedding boutonnière. The groom's clothes should be "apparently" new, but need not actually be so. The bride's clothes, on the other hand, are always brand new—every article that she has on.

The Going-away Dress

A bride necessarily chooses her going-away dress according to the journey she is to make. If she is starting off in an open motor, she wears a suitably small motor hat and a wrap of some sort over whatever dress (or suit) she chooses. If she is going on a train or boat, she wears a "traveling" dress, such as she would choose under ordinary circumstances. If she is going to a nearby hotel or a country house put at her disposal, she wears the sort of dress and hat suitable to town or country occasion. She should not dress as though about to join a circus parade or the ornaments on a Christmas tree, unless she wants to be stared at and commented upon in a way that no one of good breeding can endure.

The average bride and groom of good taste and feeling try to be as inconspicuous as possible. On one occasion, in order to hide the fact that they were "bride and groom," a young couple "went away" in their oldest clothes and were very much pleased with their cleverness, until, pulling out his handkerchief, the groom scattered rice all over the floor of the parlor car. The bride's lament after this was—"Why had she not worn her prettiest things?"

The groom, having changed his clothes, waits up-stairs, in the hall generally, until the bride emerges from her room in her traveling clothes. All the ushers shake hands with them both. His immediate family, as well as hers, have gradually collected—any that are missing must unfailingly be sent for. The bride's mother gives her a last kiss, her bridesmaids hurry downstairs to have plenty of rice ready and to tell everyone below as they descend "They are coming!" A passage from the stairway and out of the front door, all the way to the motor, is left free between two rows of eager guests, their hands full of rice. Upon the waiting motor the ushers have tied everything they can lay their hands on in the way of white ribbons and shoes and slippers.

Here They Come!

At last the groom appears at the top of the stairs, a glimpse of the bride behind him. It surely is running the gauntlet! They seemingly count "one, two, three, go!" With shoulders hunched and collars held tight to their necks, they run through shrapnel of rice, down the stairs, out through the hall, down the outside steps, into the motor, slam the door, and are off!

The wedding guests stand out on the street or roadway looking after them for as long as a vestige can be seen—and then gradually disperse.

Occasionally young couples think it clever to slip out of the area-way, or over the roofs, or out of the cellar and across the garden. All this is supposed to be in order to avoid being deluged with rice and having labels of "newly wed" or large white bows and odd shoes and slippers tied to their luggage.

Most brides, however, agree with their guests that it is decidedly "spoil sport" to deprive a lot of friends (who have only their good luck at heart) of the perfectly legitimate enjoyment of throwing emblems of good luck after them. If one white slipper among those thrown after the motor lands right side up, on top of it, and stays there, greatest good fortune is sure to follow through life.

There was a time when the "going away carriage" was always furnished by the groom, and this is still the case if it is a hired conveyance, but nowadays when nearly everyone has a motor, the newly married couple—if they have no motor of their own—are sure to have one lent them by the family of one of them. Very often they have two motors and are met by a second car at an appointed place, into which they change after shaking themselves free of rice. The white ribboned car returns to the house, as well as the decorated and labeled luggage, which was all empty—their real luggage having been bestowed safely by the best man that morning in their hotel or boat or train. Or, it may be that they choose a novel journey, for there is, of course, no regulation vehicle. They can go off in a limousine, a pony cart, a yacht, a canoe, on horseback or by airplane. Fancy alone limits the mode of travel, suggests the destination, or directs the etiquette of a honeymoon.

Bride's First Duty Of Thought For Groom's Parents

At the end of the wedding there is one thing the bride must not forget. As soon as she is in her traveling dress, she must send a bridesmaid or someone out into the hall and ask her husband's parents to come and say good-by to her. If his parents have not themselves come up-stairs to see their son, the bride must have them sent for at once!

It is very easy for a bride to forget this act of thoughtfulness and for a groom to overlook the fact that he can not stop to kiss his mother good-by on his way out of the house, and many a mother seeing her son and new daughter rush past without even a glance from either of them, has returned home with an ache in her heart.

It sounds improbable, doesn't it? One naturally exclaims, "But how stupid of her, why didn't she go up-stairs? Why didn't her son send for her?" Usually she does, or he does. But often the groom's parents are strangers; and if by temperament they are shy or retiring people they hesitate to go up-stairs in an unknown house until they are invited to.