Weddiquette, or Brides, Quit Swinging your Arms Like Ropes Already

The most beautiful wedding ever imagined could be turned from sacrament to circus by the indecorous behavior of the groom and the flippancy of the bride. Emily Post, Etiquette, 1927

As many of you know, the Kirsti half of Scott and Kirsti is now on Facebook, which means that I am frittering my time away on 60-character posts (which is great fun, by the way). Many of my FB postings lately have been about reading a very old copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette that I got for two dollars at an antique store while Scott was rifling through piles of dusty records. I have unearthed a lot of good stuff this way: wooden bowls, a garnet bracelet, Tricia Nixon paper dolls. I even found this disturbing but fascinating old book titled Medical Curiosities, written in the late nineteeth century, in which them medical term for conjoined twins was “double monsters” and lycanthropy was the diagnosis if you were unusually hairy. My pharmacist brother, Karl, really wanted that book, and when he had to move back east after Hurricane Katrina I gave it to him, so I can’t provide any more tidbits from that particular text. However, my point is that I love old, weird books, and this connects to our wedding because my Emily Post book devotes several entire chapters to wedding etiquette. And she is one odd lady, truly obsessed, at least back then, with turning everyone into what she labels "People of Quality."

I need to tell you up front that I waited to research current wedding etiquette after I sent out a good portion of the invitations, which, according to Emily Post, were sent out sixteen weeks too early, without guests’ names on the response cards. Current Emily Post also says that we must have an open bar at our wedding, because guests are not supposed to pay for anything at the wedding, but the boat does not allow open bar. Two strikes right there!

If we go by the 1920s version of Etiquette, we have already broken pretty much every single rule she lays out. First, the oldest possible age Emily Post can imagine for a bride is thirty (she has a whole section called “In Bridal Dress at Thirty” as if it’s something one finds herself in by accident, after a bender) and she stresses how crucial it is for the “Early Autumn” bride to wear “a tint of rose-beige” to flatter her aging complexion.

The closest I can come in this book to anything that would be anywhere applicable to our wedding would be “the second marriage,” even though neither of us has been married before. This section focuses on “The spinster’s wedding” and this means no bridal veil, orange blossoms, nor myrtle wreath and bridesmaids. The garland is an even bigger deal than the white dress, surprisingly—Post says that the garland is a “coronet of chastity and the bride’s right to wear it was her inalienable attribute of virtue.” No problem, because I think the tiara is the new garland--and the only myrtle wreaths I found online were for front doors.

The rules are a little different for a widow, who can’t be given away by her father because she has already been given away once. Apparently, she is not able to be "given back." Post believes that widows should be as low-key as possible, and there’s more than a hint that she finds second weddings—even those of widows—distasteful. Post recommends a “traveling dress” or “afternoon street dress and hat in any color” except white for the attire. She stresses that there ought not to be “ribboned-off seats” and only “the simplest afternoon tea" at such weddings.

Post is very much bothered by brides who have personalities or senses of humor. For example, she lists some things that a bride should never do:

She must not reach up and wigwag signals while she is receiving, any more than she must wave to people as she goes up and down the aisle of the church. She must not cling to her husband as though unable to stand, or lean against him or the wall, or any person or thing. She must not swing her arms as though they were dangling ropes. She must not switch
herself this way and that, and she must not shout; and above all, she must not, while wearing her bridal veil, smoke a cigarette.

The bride in this scenario does not sound remiss about the finer points of etiquette, but really drunk. Now, I might understand Ms. Post’s aversion to this behavior if she disapproved of drinking, but she actually finds abstainers a bit whiny and inconvenient. In her world, after a fancy dinner, women drink liqueur “from a tray of little glasses” and retreat to the parlor, and the men

…Alone, remain seated at table, drinking their fine cognac and smoking cigars and eating unsalted nuts.

At our wedding, we hope everyone enjoys as many unsalted nuts as they want, regardless of gender.