It's A Nice Day For A Blue Wedding..... Or Several

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
bride2.jpg


The first documented, white wedding dress was worn in 14o6. Philippa of England wore white as a squirrel-and ermine lined, white silk tunic. We do not know why. In 1559 Mary, Queen of Scots wore white, the color of mourning in France when she married Frenchman Francis Dauphin. Seems risky but ok. https://www.marryjim.com/en/page/show/id/30/template/history History provides a gap between Mary and Victoria who married Albert wearing a white wedding gown in 1840. Why a white wedding gown? Not, please know to advertise her pure state- that was a given. Shocking implying otherwise! Victoria wished to incorporate some favorite, white lace. Blue symbolized purity, not white by the way.

Queen Victoria's wedding was photographed beginning a demand for white wedding dresses - a bang of white froth, frills and lace heard around the western world and felt into 2016. I did say Western. ' White Weddings ', you should excuse the expression, are by no means a world wide tradition. As much as we would love to imagine ours the predominant culture we just, plain are not. A Chinese bride will look in the red dress department as will our Indian ( from India.... ) and Vietnamese sisters, a Japanese bride will begin her wedding wearing white but because it symbolizes death. She is now dead to her family! She changes to a sari of color at some point ( not familiar enough to say what and when ).

Safe to say Victoria's wedding did not transform all brides into visions of white lace, net, taffeta and general fluff. It took awhile for me personally to understand quite a few photographs of ' Civil War Couples ' ( meaning kinda era- a lot have been misidentified ) were really their wedding photograph! This whole ' wedding dress ' thing was why- a bride in a white dress? Got that. A man in the 1850's and 1860's version of a tux or fine suit of clothing, his significant other in something other than white? Ping, over my head. Got it now.

Not positive on all of these but pretty good guess. Not all are war era, please know.


bride new ebay crop two.jpg

This was of course easy! She'd added a perfectly lovely veil and both were so cute, holding their wedding rings for all to see.



 
Last edited:
c3.jpg

This is dear, also seems a wedding-ish photo. Her blouse is post war, though.

Been picking more ' Blue ' wedding images from my files, BOY is it tough browsing all of them.


c4.jpg

What kind of ribbon/medallion/meaningful emblem is the groom wearing, please? Does anyone know? Bride is also holding something. It is the correct shape and size to be a case holding another image.

c7.jpg

There are no rings here- just the rings on each small finger. Maybe an engagement photo instead although did even wealthy couples do that? OR- still wedding photo, pre-ceremony?

wwed11.jpg


c8.jpg

* Edit, March 19, 2017, from NathanB, ID'd this lovely couple as included in a thread here on men from Hood's Brigade.
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/men-of-hoods-texas-brigade.92547/page-7. Quite a bit more, as far as a bio, at the link- and it's a great thread.


Description from Flickr:
" Elbert S. Jemison and his bride Louisa A. McElderry (b.1842 - d.1939) are shown on their wedding trip in 1858. Louisa A. McElderry was the daughter of Thomas McElderry, one of Talladega Counties pioneer families. Thomas fought along side of Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Talladega. Louisa married Elbert Jemison in Talladega on October 26, 1858. "


I don't know. For all the newspaper articles and photos of the increasingly popular ' wedding dress ', it certainly appears an awful lot of women wore a lovely dress other than a white gown.
wwed5.jpg


Legend has it Queen Victoria only picked white because she had a favorite piece of white lace she wished to include in her wedding dress. My problem with this is most lace ( before anyone gets upset, no, not all ) was white or cream or ivory- and dresses did not always' match ' the lace. So why would Victoria feel she needed to match her lace then, for that day? A length of white lace would look well on any color dress- and there does not seem to have been some general ' rule ' where lace must match fabric. I'm only making a paragraph of the point because Victoria's dress apparently set the stage for all the white wedding dresses from then through today. ' Why white, Victoria? ' may still not be answered.

wwed6.jpg

I'm guessing the flower in her hair and the groom's Sunday best are giveaways here.

wwed7.jpg

What a lovely collection of finery- wish I knew what, exactly she is wearing! His is also very ' dress '.

wwed8.jpg

I'd give a lot to know more of this couple. Smitten!

wwed9.jpg

Another young couple dressed in more than Sunday best, safe to assume this is yet another wedding couples, like all of these from Pinterest.

wwed10.jpg


wwed12.jpg

Love these two, happy yet terrified.



 
Last edited:
June is the month for weddings. I wonder what is history behind that. Might be worth checking into.

Wonderful photos.


Donna, that is a great idea, thank you! This is an old thread, think maybe for June I'll bump all our wedding threads. ! I'd always assumed it must have something to do with just being out of winter, travel being easy, maybe Spring planting being done, already.
 
Ebay is quite a wonder place for old wedding photos. It does worry you, wondering how many family members are unaware they're selling these- because white lace and froth are not visible, no clue a wedding was not at hand.

wedding new dec 2016.jpg

Her posies should be a giveaway, isn't she lovely?

wedding oct.jpg

Lace collar, fine clothing, very young couple- does not always indicate a wedding but usually, especially in this era.

wedding orange ny.jpg

This couple is from Orange, New York and not identified. We have a lot of ancestors in that area, this era- with the means to have visited photographers. It's a ' thing ', with me, keeping an eye out for photos from the area. We'll never know whether or not someone would be related- but it's a wonderful thought.

couple.jpg


wed1.jpg
wedding couple.jpg
wedding new 1.JPG
wedding.jpg


Ebay, Pinterest, LoC
 
Last edited:
Re the "double wedding"--one of my favorite sources on CW-era women's wear, Who Wore What? Women's Wear 1861-1865 by Juanita Leisch, points out (p. 65) that it was fashionable for wedding attendants to dress just like the bride. So it could be a double wedding or it could just be the bride and groom with their attendants!
 
Re the "double wedding"--one of my favorite sources on CW-era women's wear, Who Wore What? Women's Wear 1861-1865 by Juanita Leisch, points out (p. 65) that it was fashionable for wedding attendants to dress just like the bride. So it could be a double wedding or it could just be the bride and groom with their attendants!


As ever ( and please do not feel I'm ' throwing the hammer ' * ) excellent piece of very cool History, thanks very much! Hate to refer to this kind of thing as ' trivia ' because it could be taken wrong= am not trivializing the information. :giggle: Like the game, these little know factoids are very, very cool! I won't edit the original post, to correct because it's always pretty cool, seeing these corrections added. Well, I like it, anyway. Editing to add ' see below '. Thanks very much!

* From England, early 1800's, meaning to praise someone but probably too much, and not really mean it.
 
Great Images. The one thing that stands out to me is the women's waistline, they remind me of Mamie cinching up Scarlet down to 20 inch waistline. Rhett, Rhett "What ever shall I do"
 
I have heard that the man wearing a wedding ring was something that came about in the late 19th or early 20th century???


Yes, an awful lot of long-held ' But but but.... ' of mine have been blown to heck by virtue of digging around in these old treasures. Boy is it humbling. By great good fortune I've never set myself up as a Big Pants. :angel: As in, I'm not personally an ' expert ' at a thing, merely have picked up ' stuff ' by being allowed other people's shoulders to rub. And Immersion Therapy for History Geeks. Try wading around in National Archives and Library of Congress for 5 years without loading up your soaks and making puddles with your shoes.

Who knows? Perhaps a specific culture settling in this country traditionally used wedding rings for both men and women- and it slowly caught on from there. Seeing one as a rarity in these early photos might ( guessing ) reflect some much older tradition, elsewhere?

( editing thread, please no one be confused. Ami asked for shareables, for her use. )
 
I wonder if Victoria's dress colour was her way of representing the death of her being a child in the eyes of everyone. From what I've read she was a very diminutive women height wise and this oft led people to not take her seriously.

You know, I never thought of that? Read somewhere she chose white because she had a piece of favorite lace she wished to include in her wedding dress. Lace of course could be extremely costly; lace makers must have been incredible. Even royalty used lace over and over again. The thing is, there was no source, when I found that so it may or may not be true. I'd have to look around- era papers, perhaps something would be there. . Not always a terrific source but for something like Victoria's dress it may be safe.
 
A brief article on Queen Victoria and her white wedding dress. Has wonderful picture of her and Prince Albert.

http://time.com/3698249/white-weddings/
Amazing how we discuss this to this moment. I've noticed too in recent years women's clothing has two extremes, either very risqué, or very modest, there isn't really a middle ground anymore.
 
Amazing how we discuss this to this moment. I've noticed too in recent years women's clothing has two extremes, either very risqué, or very modest, there isn't really a middle ground anymore.

Well, unless you catch me sliding as unobtrusively as humanly possible through daily contact with other humans. It's extremely ' middle '. Camo! Not the pattern.

I don't know. If you're familiar with something we never encountered before these little districts, ' Prom Walk ', you'd see things actually improved a tad. ' Prom Walk ' is where an entire town seems to come to one's local high school, couples attending prom ' walk ' together down a designated path. Crowd then may ' Oooh ' and ' Ahhhh ', or shed tears according to one's inclination towards young women as future brides- or not. School is cancelled this Friday each year, so preparations may occur.

In my daughter's ' time ' ( she was gee whiz- class of 2009? ), HOLY Cow, dresses? Wowza. First to appear were the nearly-plastic, snuggly hugging er, back areas, but still perhaps covering as well as one would imagine. Within a year, a scooped back pointed downwards towards this place and made you blink, thinking " Oh. Is that the new style? " Indeed it was. When a plumber does that we ask him to please pull up his pants.

By the time she was a senior, prom dresses were thinly disguised, $600 bikinis with stretchy fabric tacking a few holes together around rhinestones, in order for the dry cleaners to be able to charge you the dress rate, not the bikini rate. My daughter ( well, me ) still paid a good chunk and it still qualified as ' cute ' ( meaning cleavage, I think ) but there was fabric, even if it would have melted, not burned. Parents? Loved these miniscule socks their kids were wearing with spike heels so high, they honest-to-goodness, looked like humane killers for livestock.

Last year, was bludgeoned into viewing a friend's collection of photos taken while at one local Prom Walk- good indication she's a dear friend. Had sworn mightily, never again. What a charming surprise, Shannon! Certainly, figure huggers and cleavage plungers but who cares? Young girls feeling terrific about themselves is a good sign for all of us. " GONE, the nearly-naked, bootlicious look. Pretty " is back as is " elegant ", I think. Also " Fun ", from the looks of things- always a plus, too. It was very nice!
 
Back
Top