Here Comes the Victorian Era Bride

[Eleanor Rose]

Victorian Bride and Groom on their 1898 wedding day.​

It seems Victorian women were trained from the time they were little girls to become a "proper" wife. They were taught the "skills" of a wife: cooking, washing, raising children, sewing and weaving. They were taught the skills of needlework, painting, French, dancing, music and proper etiquette. Victorian brides were expected to be innocent of worldly ways.

These skills weren't taught to simply help a Victorian woman catch a man. They were taught to help her catch the right man, because if she didn't measure up to the Victorian man's expectations of a proper woman, she would end up a spinster. Since marriage was considered a woman's "natural destiny," shame was put upon spinsterhood. Nonetheless, about 11% of Victorian women never married. Surprisingly, in those days, the more educated a woman was, the less likely it was she would marry. If she was a teacher her marriage potential was especially bleak because she had limited opportunities to associate with men. Victorian women who didn't marry were expected to dedicate their lives to charitable endeavors.

Thoughts of marriage often filled Victorian women with a lot of anxiety. Marriage was not the freedom they often longed for. They were normally tied to their homes and bore an average of 5-7 children. For Victorian men, however, it was a very different story. They often rushed the women to marriage for the benefits of sex, pampering and housekeeping service.

During the Victorian era, men typically married in their mid to late twenties while women were much younger. Most weddings were held in the home until the 1820s when church weddings became popular. Weddings were usually held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays to accommodate the local ministers' busy weekend schedule. Engagement rings were not given until about the 1840s when they were presented to the man as well as to the woman. Victorian era wedding rings were generally plain gold bands.

June was a popular month for Victorian weddings perhaps in part because it is named for Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. Juno was supposed to bring prosperity and happiness to all who wed in her month. Of course practicality also played a part in this selection too. If married in June, the Victorian bride was likely to give birth to her first child in Spring. This would allow her enough time to recover before the next Fall harvest. June also signified the end of Lent and the arrival of warmer weather.

In addition to June, the months of April, November and December were also popular for weddings as not to conflict with peak farm work months. October was considered auspicious, signifying a bountiful harvest. May was considered unlucky, taking from the proverb that states "Marry in May and rue the day." Another proverb states, "Marry in September's shine, your living will be rich and fine." In the south, April was a favorite month to marry because it was less hot and humid. Brides often chose flowers that bloomed in April such as jasmine and camellia.

Not surprisingly, Victorian brides were superstitious about days of the week too. A popular Victorian rhyme was:

Marry on...
Monday for health,
Tuesday for wealth,
Wednesday the best day of all,
Thursday for crosses,
Friday for losses, and
Saturday for no luck at all.


Sources:
Meredith Sweetpea - Training for a Victorian Marriage - Victorian Weddings
Excerpts from www.literary-liaisons.com


Edit: I couldn't resist doing a little background search on the adorable wedding couple featured above. They are identified by their great-granddaughter as simply Esther and Nathan. This was their wedding day in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 16, 1898. According to their great-granddaughter, Audree, "Esther and my great-grandfather Nathan married in 1898 at the age of 19. In 1899, Nathan was called to serve a two year ecclesiastical mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England, leaving behind his wife and infant son. Together they had 13 children and were married for 58 years."

 

[Eleanor Rose]

For hundreds of years, people have declared there were omens that could predict weddings and happy marriages. Here are some of the ones the Victorians believed and some folks still believe today:

You (or someone you know) will be married soon when:

- A chicken enters your house with a straw in its mouth, which it leaves behind.

- A mockingbird flies over your house.

- A white dove comes near your house.

- A spider descends from the ceiling and "dances" up and down.

- A cow moos at night.


Your marriage will be happy if:

- You feed a cat from one of your old shoes just before you marry.

- A cat sneezes in front of the bride on the day before the wedding.

- Either party dreams about the wedding day.

- You marry in June.

- Your wedding ceremony lasts between a half hour and an hour (the rising hand of the clock denotes rising fortune.)

- You marry in the afternoon.

- You marry on a beautiful day.

- A ray of sunshine falls on you as you leave the church.

- It snows on your wedding day.

- You see a lamb or dove on the way to the church.

- A flock of white birds flies directly over you on the way to the wedding.

- You carry bread in your pocket and throw it away on your wedding day.

- A spider crawls on the wedding dress just before the ceremony.

- The bride wears earrings during the ceremony.

- The bridge has her hair done and veil put on by a happily-married woman.

- A new dime is placed in the bride's left shoe just before she walks down the aisle.

- Orange blossoms are used in the wedding decorations.

- You carry a pinch of salt to the church.

- The bridegroom carries a horseshoe in his pocket during the ceremony.

- The bride cries on her wedding day.

- You both step into, and out of, the church on your right foot first.


There are also don'ts that you should heed:

- Don't get married to someone born in the same month as you.

- Don't get married on your birthday.

- Don't get married during Lent.

- Don't postpone your wedding.

- Don't let the groom see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony.

- Don't let the bride wear pearls (each pearl represents a tear).

- Don't get married in a church with bats (if a bat flies over you, it will bring bad luck.)



–Excerpted from "Everything Romantic: A Book for Lovers" by Michael Newman.

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Victorian newlyweds at Niagara Falls. (Pinterest)
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A celebration or party followed the marriage ceremony. Liquor, wine, tea or lemonade was served. White wedding cakes became known in the 1820s, but were limited to upper class weddings.

On the night of the marriage, a charivari was customary in French Louisiana, Florida, Michigan and Canada, where friends and family "serenaded" the couple with horns, bells, whistles, pans, kettles and other noisemakers until they were invited in for refreshments and entertainment.

Honeymoons became popular after the 1820s and were often called bridal tours, wedding tours or nuptial journeys. Popular US honeymoon locations included New York City and Niagara Falls. The newlyweds were accompanied by friends or family until about the 1860s when it became popular to honeymoon alone.

​

Few Victorian women openly admitted to enjoying sex. The "experts" of the Victorian era claimed it was impossible for a woman to derive such physical pleasure, and if she did, she was labeled "abnormal."


–Excerpted from "The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s" by Marc McCutcheon.

 

[Eleanor Rose]

A Victorian bride and groom (Pinterest)​

To be fair, Victorian men also had their own preparations to make for marriage. They were expected to impress the women (and often their fathers) by being upstanding citizens, industrious, unselfish, financially secure, pious, patient and affectionate. Men were often ten years older than their brides. They were expected to go out into the world and establish themselves before taking a wife. Men dealt with on-going scrutiny from their male peers. A Victorian man's success and respectability were constantly being observed.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Ah, wedding season! Not to take a thing from this thread- we tend to love the topic this time of year, you have company! Only linking one because it has some favorite images plus a lot of wedding photos go unnoticed- no white dress.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/its-a-nice-day-for-a-blue-wedding-or-several.123756/#post-1314862

These became ever-more-elaborate almost instantly post war. The whole ' white wedding ' thing that began in the 1840's as Victoria set her stage had not fully caught on. You just married in your best dress. Pinterest photo above ( am not being critical, just kinda an fyi ), is more post Victorian? Pinterest can be dicey on dates. Well, on a lot. Favorite has to be the Lincoln wedding photo! Someone photo shopped one, gluing Lincoln and Mary Todd photos together, and it's all the heck all over the internet.

Go to Godey's- fair warning, you'll get lost! They sure promoted the white, frothy wedding, Holy Cow!

 

[FarawayFriend]

A Victorian bride and groom (Pinterest)​

To be fair, Victorian men also had their own preparations to make for marriage. They were expected to impress the women (and often their fathers) by being upstanding citizens, industrious, unselfish, financially secure, pious, patient and affectionate. Men were often ten years older than their brides. They were expected to go out into the world and establish themselves before taking a wife. Men dealt with on-going scrutiny from their male peers. A Victorian man's success and respectability were constantly being observed.

This one cracks me up!!
You cannot say who looks happier, little Miss (or Mrs!) Sunshine or her brand new husband!
A life together that starts with an expression like this on both faces can only get happier!
May they have lived long and prospered.

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Getty Images​

Our Victorian friends received some of the most head-scratching pieces of marriage advice I've ever heard. Therese Oneill, author of the book, "Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners," shares some of the advice from the era and the interesting rationales behind them.

Don't make love purely for pleasure or fun. Some Victorian-era experts thought doing so led to diseases like cancer. "These doctors very seldom cited anything remotely connected to science for their beliefs, but they didn't need to," says Oneill. "Most of the people who bought their books, thought being punished by God and nature for transgressing their designs made perfect sense."

Don't make love when you're feeling absent minded. The thinking was that a child conceived during a less-than-exciting sexual encounter would be dull and absent-minded. "As evidence they pointed to how many great men in history, like Da Vinci, were bastards," says Oneill. "As bastards it was assumed they were conceived in passion, making their father's seed more acute than in normal situations."

Don't make love when you're intoxicated. "It was even more dangerous to try and conceive if drunk," says Oneill. Victorians believed "that's how 'idiocy and numerous nervous maladies' were transferred to the child."

Getty Images​

Always look presentable for your husband. Victorian women were encouraged to always look fashionable, "but not too fashionable so that she strained her husband's pocketbook or appeared to be putting on airs," says Oneill. This included personal hygiene. Being tidy was expected, but being "too clean" could make others uncomfortable "to be in the presence of someone so fastidious." By the same token, wives were expected to look "alluring, but not too alluring," says Oneill. "Nothing would humiliate a man more than for his wife to appear of easy virtue." Makeup was discouraged (that's one more thing a husband had to pay for) but, "a pale even skin tone, rosy lips, and sparkling eyes" were considered assets in a woman.

Lastly, if a Victorian wife learned that her husband had been unfaithful, the advice of the day was discretion. Victorians thought, "It's in a man's nature to go searching for a new version of the girl you used to be before you bore him seven children and made the comforts of his home the envy of the neighborhood," explains Oneill. Slighted wives should take solace in the fact that they were still the Mrs., the one he would always have to take care of first. According to Oneill, "Those were the unspoken rules of Victorian cheating."

​

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Mother and daughter attending World's Fair, Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Getty Images​

Sad, but often true, a proper Victorian lady wouldn't be expecting anything more than a "lovely snuggle" on her wedding night. If a courtship was done respectably, a newlywed wife and husband barely knew each other. The marriage experts of the day (almost entirely male) lamented that "a mother was downright cruel to send her daughter off to her nuptial bed without telling her what awaited her." Unfortunately, these experts didn't tell the mothers what they should say. They only warned that a bride could be traumatized if unprepared.

 

[Eleanor Rose]

This image was circulated on numerous social networks as Harriet Tubman, but it isn't. It's actually a photograph of Lady Sara Forbes Bonetta Davies, whose biographical information is summarized in Wikipedia as:

"Lady Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843- 15 August 1880) was a West African Egbado Omoba who was orphaned in intertribal warfare, sold into slavery, and in a remarkable twist of events, was liberated from enslavement, and became a goddaughter to Queen Victoria. She was married to Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, the wealthy Victorian Lagos philanthropist."

She is certainly beautiful!

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Vintage Everyday 2018
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In the 1840s, formal weddings were usually all-white occasions, with the bridal gown, bridesmaids' dresses and veils being white. Veils were attached to a flower coronet that included orange blossoms for the bride and roses or other seasonal flowers for the attendants.

On the American Frontier, brides in the 1850s and 1860s rarely wore white, since their dress would subsequently be used for special events and church. Their wedding dresses were often made of cambric, wool or linen. However, the bride often wore a colorful shawl. The shawl could be more cherished than the wedding dress.

The widow who remarried in the early and mid-Victorian eras did not wear white. She had no bridesmaids, no veil and certainly no orange blossoms (a symbol of purity). She would usually wear a lavender or pearl-colored silk gown. She could also wear shades just off from white, such as rose, salmon, ivory or violet.


–Excerpted from The Victorian Wedding - www.literary-liaisons.com.

 

[dixie1861]

Thanks so much for posting! So interesting.

Side note, well, really a question: Did men back in those days usually have wedding bands?

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Thanks so much for posting! So interesting.

Side note, well, really a question: Did men back in those days usually have wedding bands?

It was only in the early 20th century that the tradition of male wedding rings as we know it began. It wasn't the norm for men to wear wedding rings in the 19th century. My hunch would be that it might depend on their vocation (just as it often does today). Men engaged in manual labor would have been less inclined to wear a ring.

FYI: One of the reasons the wedding ring is worn on the left hand is that it is believed the vein of love or vena amoris runs through the left hand. Of course, this varies among cultures.

 

[dixie1861]

It was only in the early 20th century that the tradition of male wedding rings as we know it began. It wasn't the norm for men to wear wedding rings in the 19th century. My hunch would be that it might depend on their vocation (just as it often does today). Men engaged in manual labor would have been less inclined to wear a ring.

FYI: One of the reasons the wedding ring is worn on the left hand is that it is believed the vein of love or vena amoris runs through the left hand. Of course, this varies among cultures.

Ok, thank you!!! Yeah, I've noticed in old pictures most of the men don't wear one. Haha, interesting. Very interesting. All kind of strange ideas.

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Ok, thank you!!! Yeah, I've noticed in old pictures most of the men don't wear one. Haha, interesting. Very interesting. All kind of strange ideas.

You actually sparked my interest so I looked back at some photos of General Lee and General Longstreet. Neither appear to be wearing a wedding band. Interestingly, I think both were portrayed wearing wedding bands in the movie, Gettysburg.

 

[Blessmag]

Pampering?????????????

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Pampering?????????????

 

[Eleanor Rose]

Dressing the bride, 1902 Stereograph image by Hawley C. White.
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The custom of a bridal shower can be traced back to 1890s. It is said this developed from the earlier dowry practices when a less affluent father could not provide the dowry money or the father of the bride refused to give dowry as a sign of disapproval to the marriage. In these circumstances family friends would come together and give the bride-to-be gifts or money in lieu of her dowry and show their support for the wedding.

Tea parties were often held as bridal showers during the Victorian era. Most were held at the bride's home or at the home of a close friend.

A bridal shower should not be confused with a bridal trousseau. This consisted of the things a bride brought with her to the wedding. It was not a dowry. A proper trousseau in Victorian times was rather surprising to me when I first read about it. The following is excerpts from "Home Dressmaking – a complete guide to Household Sewing" by Anne E. Meyers. It was published in 1892.

"A young woman should only provide herself with a complete and good outfit of clothes such as she should have at hand all her life.

This outfit should be fresh and well made and not lacking in necessaries, but that does not mean a dozen dozen of each piece of underwear and a dozen trunks filled with frocks. It means rather just enough clothing to last the bride one year, at the furthest.

No woman with real womanly pride wants her prospective husband to provide her trousseau, and no woman wishes her husband to be put to much expense immediately. Yet it is not best to leave it too long before allowing him to provide something for her comfort and adoring. He will take a pleasure in doing it and such harmless pleasures should not be denied him."

Anne E. Meyers also provides advice for those brides "moving in a modest circle socially."

"Such a bride will require but one half-dozen night dresses, the same number of drawers, undervests, corset-covers and dressing sacques. She will want the same number of petticoats, with two flannel short ones, one white and one colored.

A long black silk petticoat should be among the first six. She will need the same number of hose, two pairs of waking boots and as many shoes. She should have six to ten pairs of gloves and plenty of collars and pieces of ruching and lace for her dresses. Handkerchiefs may be unlimited but one dozen is sufficient. There must be a winter wrap and one for spring and autumn wear. Three hats will be required, one for the best, one for general and another for evening-wear.

By the way of gowns, she must have two woolen street dresses, as many silk visiting or dinner dresses, one evening dress at least – her wedding gown will answer, if it is not too elaborate – two simple and pretty house dresses and a heavy and a lighter wrapper or tea gown.

She should be provided with good brushes for the toilette and all the other necessaries for the same."

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[dixie1861]

You actually sparked my interest so I looked back at some photos of General Lee and General Longstreet. Neither appear to be wearing a wedding band. Interestingly, I think both were portrayed wearing wedding bands in the movie, Gettysburg.

Haha, leave it to the movies.

 

[Mrs. V]

This one cracks me up!!
You cannot say who looks happier, little Miss (or Mrs!) Sunshine or her brand new husband!
A life together that starts with an expression like this on both faces can only get happier!
May they have lived long and prospered.

Maybe because she is wearing a garden salad on her head? Lol!

 

[Mrs. V]

The Niagra pic is definitely 1860 ish. You can see the imprint of her hoop at the bottom edge of her skirt. My Ggrandma was married in the 1900's her dress is quite slim. She wasn't smiling either. Marriage is serious business I guess!