Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (great book club books TXT) 📖

their

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