This is the huge wedding of the daughter of ultra rich and prominent people in a city such as New York, or, more probably, a high-noon wedding out of town. The details would in either case he the same, except that the "country setting" makes necessary the additional provision of a special train which takes the guests to a station where they are met by dozens of motors and driven to the church. Later they are driven to the house, and later again, to the returning special train.
Otherwise, whether in the city or the country, the church (if Protestant) is decorated with masses of flowers in some such elaborateness as standards, or arches, or hanging garlands in the church itself, as well as the floral embellishment of the chancel. The service is conducted by a bishop or other distinguished clergyman, with assistant clergymen, and accompanied by a full choral service, possibly with the addition of a celebrated opera soloist. The costumes of the bride and her maids are chosen with painstaking attention to perfection, and with seeming disregard of cost.
Later, at the house, there is not only a floral bower under which the bridal couple receive, but every room has been turned into a veritable woodland or garden, so massed are the plants and flowers. An orchestra—or two, so that the playing may be without intermission—is hidden behind palms in the hall or wherever is most convenient. A huge canopied platform is built on the lawn or added to the veranda (or built out over the yard of a city house), and is decorated to look like an enclosed formal garden. It is packed with small tables, each seating four, six, or eight, as the occasion may require.
The Average Fashionable Wedding
The more usual fashionable wedding is merely a modification of the one outlined above. The chancel of the church is decorated exactly the same, but except in summer when garden flowers are used, there is very little attempted in the body of the church other than sprays of flowers at the ends of the ten to twenty reserved pews, or possibly only at the ends of the first two pews and the two that mark the beginning of the ribboned section. There is often a choral service and a distinguished officiating clergyman. The costumes of bride and bridesmaids are usually the same in effect, though they may be less lavish in detail.
The real difference begins at the breakfast, where probably a hundred guests are invited, or two hundred at most, instead of from five hundred to a thousand, and except for the canopied background against which the bride and groom receive, there is very little floral decoration of the house. If a tent is built, it is left as it is—a tent—with perhaps some standard trees at intervals to give it a decorated appearance. The tables, even that of the bride, their garniture, the service, and the food are all precisely the same, the difference being in the smaller number of guests provided for.
A Small Wedding
A small wedding is merely a further modification of the two preceding ones. Let us suppose it is a house wedding in a moderate-sized house.
A prayer bench has been placed at the end of the drawing-room or living-room. Back of it is a screen or bower of palms or other greens. One decoration thus serves for chancel and background at the reception. A number of small tables in the dining-room may seat perhaps twenty or even fifty guests, besides the bride's table placed in another room. If the bride has no attendants, she and the groom choose a few close friends to sit at the table with them. Or, at a smaller wedding, there is a private marriage in a little chapel, or the clergyman reads the service at the house of the bride in the presence of her parents and his and a small handful of guests, who all sit down afterwards at one table for a wedding breakfast.
Or there may be a greater number of guests and a simpler collation, such as a stand-up afternoon tea, where the refreshments are sandwiches, cakes, tea and chocolate.