Weddings: Early I Do's

The white formal dress, elaborate floral arrangements, and legions of guests, most a part of modern wedding days, were not always facets of this important occasion. According to historian Kathleen Gossman, who has done extensive research on Upstate weddings of years past, the 1902 wedding of Bertha Callas and Robert Boyd in Newry in Oconee County featured the formal dress of the day, but it was sewn by the bride herself.

Nowadays, the big day is centered around the workweek, but during the nineteenth century, it may have come down to fortune: Wednesday was considered the luckiest day of all. And Saturday when most modern weddings occur? A very unlucky day. Bertha and Robert were married midweek, though they did not have an afternoon wedding—it was a late-evening ceremony at 9 p.m., probably so that families could clean up after work to attend.

But, like many of today’s affairs, the Boyd’s wedding followed a growing trend of the time: larger ceremonies. Newspaper coverage of such lavish weddings spurred this movement. According to Gossman, the local paper reported that there were so many guests at the Boyd wedding that they could not fit into the large hall where the ceremony was held.

One whimsical tradition that’s fallen by the wayside is the inclusion of tokens into the bride’s cake. At one time, says Gossman, metal or china tokens were baked into a cake, and the attendants demolished it to find the trinket that would tell their future: “a ring for married within a year; a penny for wealth, my dear; a thimble for an old maid or bachelor born; and a button for sweethearts all forlorn.”

Whether you sew your own dress or bake buttons into a cake, you may look to joyful nuptials of the past to incorporate new traditions into your memorable wedding day.