Wedding Invitations

Here we are in June, prime wedding season, and many peoples’ weekends are full with weddings or wedding-related events like showers or luncheons or bachelor parties. For some guests and members of the wedding party, multiple wedding events might get on the pricey side. Of course they would love to attend each and every one of your parties, but it’s thoughtful (not to mention good wedding etiquette) to keep others’ finances in mind when scheduling or planning such events.

For instance, some brides might all but mandate that the members of their bridal party attend multiple bridal showers and an elaborate bachelorette party (it’s not uncommon these days for some bachelorette and bachelor parties to last an entire weekend in addition to happening out of town in an exciting location, like Las Vegas) on top of the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception. But if any of those bridesmaids live out of town, attendance at these parties means paying for plane tickets, hotel rooms, and rental cars over and over – and this might mean, for some girls, that the “fun” line item on their budget was blown long before the actual wedding.

Of course, your results may vary – your wedding party members might be in a completely different financial situation from that described in the above example. But it certainly doesn’t hurt anything for the bride and groom to mention – when asking people to be a bridesmaid or groomsman – that being in the wedding party could mean a significant financial commitment on their part. That’s not just good wedding etiquette, that’s also common sense and good manners.

Yesterday we learned ushers were historically guards who helped escort and protect the bride and groom and in many cases, even helped kidnap the brides.

Now if that’s where ushers came from, why do we have bridesmaids?

Years later when the threat and ciaos of kidnapping had calmed down a bit, it became common for the bride to travel to her groom’s village while being escorted by her bridesmaids.  Kidnapping wasn’t entirely out of the question at this time, so the bridesmaids would dress in similar wedding gowns as to confuse anyone intending on sabotaging the marriage.  This way, hopefully the saboteurs would get confused and kidnap the wrong lady. I feel bad for the lady who was taken. I’d imagine it would be difficult to “act” like she was the bride (to trick them into thinking they got the right person), while fearing her own fate.

The reasons for the sabotage and/or kidnapping in these cases were often to hold the bride for ransom, rejected suitors wanted her for himself and some people simply wanted to rob the bride.

Ever wonder why it’s tradition for the bridesmaids to often wear gowns almost as beautiful as the brides? Well, this is one place where this idea came from.  Of course now days things have changed and we don’t play be the same rules.

P.S. These historical events took place in Europe.

Be sure to read up in next weeks wedding etiquette section. Have a beautiful weekend!