If she decides to give a luncheon, she should select a day near enough that of the wedding to give a certain thrill to the occasion, and yet not so near as to make these great events seem to crowd one upon the other. Should the bridesmaids live at a distance, and come to the home-town of their friend on purpose to attend the wedding, it may be necessary to have the lunch take place only two or three days in advance. A week is a better interval, however. Should there be some young friend who is unable to serve as a bridesmaid—on account of family mourning, lameness, or some similar drawback—the bride may like to include her in the invitations. The bridesmaids do not appear in any special costume, but wear the same sort of dress as at any lunch, retaining their hats unless the bride asks them to remove them. The latter wears a pretty house dress suitable for the afternoon. The luncheon may be a handsome affair or simple and inexpensive, as the young hostess finds convenient. She or a friend may like to paint the place-cards, which should have devices appropriate to the occasion. True-lovers’ knots, Cupids, hearts and darts are always in order. Pink is a favorite color for the decorations, green and white also having a pretty effect.
The traditional ring, coin, and thimble are often placed in the cake, each girl carefully scrutinizing her piece to see what her future lot is to be. The gifts to the bridesmaids are usually awarded at this luncheon, and should be all alike. Some small article of jewelry to be worn at the wedding is usually chosen. L’Art Nouveau suggests many pretty things that are not necessarily expensive, the theory being that jewelry should please by color and design rather than by costliness. Brooches, pendants, bracelets, hat-pins, or fans are among the suitable gifts. They may be set one at each place as souvenirs.
Since the bridesmaids’ luncheon is intended to be a gay and merry rather than a somber and melancholy affair, it is well to ask one or two of the guests to arrange some amusing feature for the day. Thus, if the bride has many admirers, a dance of the rejected suitors would be appropriate. These could be represented by two of the company. They should be furnished with large bandana handkerchiefs on which to weep copiously. After treading a slow and melancholy measure, each should break a stick over his knee in accordance with the old tradition.
A dinner is sometimes given instead of a luncheon, and to this the groom, best man, and ushers are occasionally asked. A novel way to give a bridesmaids’ luncheon would be to ask each girl to prepare beforehand one article of the bill of fare. The bride also should contribute something of her own manufacture to the menu. A judge, duly appareled in wig and gown, should be appointed to award the prize to the maker of the most toothsome article, or a feminine jury of three might be impaneled. The prize-winner should have a blue ribbon declaring her to be the most promising candidate for matrimony. At the bride’s place should be a small souvenir album with white cover, containing the receipts used for the different articles of the bill of fare, and mentioning the school or cooking-class where each girl had acquired her culinary skill. It would be quite in order to invent imaginary colleges and degrees, phrased in home-made Latin, as, for instance, Cookia Superba Prattii Institutionis.
Sometimes a bridesmaids’ lunch is followed by a rehearsal of the wedding procession at the church, the ushers and young girls returning to the bride’s home for afternoon tea. It is pleasant to have the members of the wedding-party meet beforehand in order to make one another’s acquaintance. Thus a dinner or a theater party for the bridesmaids and ushers is sometimes given two or three days before the marriage takes place.
Should the bridegroom give a bachelor dinner to his ushers and best man? This is a question which each young man must decide for himself, always taking into consideration the tastes and tendencies of those who would compose the party. It should be frankly said that at certain occasions of this sort in the past, too much wine has been consumed with sad results. Therefore if the groom himself or any of his intimate friends finds temperance difficult, it certainly is unwise to arrange a bachelor dinner and thus fly in the face of Providence, as old-fashioned people would say.
If the dinner is to take place, it should be within a fortnight or a week before the wedding. It is well to have an interval of several days elapse between the two events. The guests invited are the best man, ushers, and sometimes other intimate friends of the groom and the brothers of the bride. Black-cloth dinner-jacket, with trousers and low-cut waistcoat to match, dress-shirt, and black tie compose the proper costume. The dinner is given at the groom’s club or home or in a private dining-room at some good restaurant. The groom being the host, he sits at the head of the table; the best man may be opposite to him or at his right hand. In the latter case the head usher or the bride’s brother may take the foot.
The provision of wine should be a judicious one. When the dinner is quite advanced the best man proposes the bride’s health. All arise and drink this toast standing. According to the old custom, each man snaps the stem of his wine-glass between his fingers, then throws it away. The souvenirs presented by the groom to his best man and ushers are laid at each place. These are usually scarf-pins, although cuff-links are sometimes given. Beside each plate may also be a box done up with white ribbon, containing the gloves and tie to be worn at the wedding. The best man usually orders these, taking care to select gloves of the right size, but the bridegroom pays the bill. A convenient method is to give a list of the ushers with their addresses to a haberdasher of established reputation. He then sends an engraved or printed card to each man, saying that Mr. So-and-So has ordered gloves and tie for him and asking the size of his hand. Should other guests besides the best man and ushers be at the dinner, it would be better not to present the souvenirs, ties, etc., but to send them to each person’s residence or club.
WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES
The wedding anniversaries usually celebrated are the fifth, wooden; the tenth, tin; the twenty-fifth, silver; and the fiftieth, golden. Few couples live to observe the latter, and still fewer the seventy-fifth, the diamond wedding. The fifth and tenth anniversaries are occasions of fun and frolic. The invitations may be given over the telephone or in any way preferred. For a wooden wedding a novel method would be to divide the thin end of a shingle into several portions about the size of a postal card, writing or painting the invitations on these. The easiest way is to use the joint visiting-card of host and hostess, writing on it: