Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📕

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entirely superseded the locket.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