Here Comes the Bride

Ah, ‘tis nothing so rare as a day in June.  June traditionally has been the month associated with joyous weddings and the celebration of young love united in holy matrimony.  Weddings are surrounded with all sorts of customs, traditions, and old wives’ tales.  Allow me to shine some light upon these practices.

June became the time for weddings for a couple of reasons.  Formerly, churches would only be heated on Sunday mornings—and just barely.  Churches were not available for large Saturday weddings until the heating season was done.  One might look at family histories and see that Grandma and Grandpa or Aunt Ingebor and Uncle Torvold were married in the parsonage.  That was commonplace for weddings scheduled during the heating season.

We may tell the groom dressed in his finery, “You clean up pretty good, don’t ya’ know.”  June is a time for our ancestors in the north could finally get cleaned up.  After months of accumulating winter’s stink and chimney soot, the creeks and ponds were warm enough to thoroughly bathe.  Still, highly scented peonies and other fragrant garden flowers covered up what the creek and lye soap could not conquer.

The Interim Geezer and Mrs. Geezer, in fact, celebrate their wedding anniversary during the month of June.  We were not married for the reasons above but rather, my bride, a teacher, did want to be married during the school year. Understandably, she wanted a little time between the last day of school and her wedding day to take care of those details brides are fond of tending to.

There are marriage customs that go back much farther than the days of our pioneering kinfolk.  We must remember that marriages were a transaction between families or between the groom and the bride’s family.  Many moons ago, I played Lazar Wolf in “Fiddler on the Roof.”  He was the village butcher smitten by Tevye’s daughter and strikes a deal for her hand over which there is much consternation.  The dowry was an important factor in the connubial contract.

Thus, we have two people in the wedding party whose roles date back to those days of the marriage contract.  “Best Man” is a cleaned-up version of “best man with the sword.”  The groom would select from his family or the community the best man with the sword who would defend the honor of the groom in case the father of the bride would welch on the deal and try to pass off the ugly daughter instead.  History does not reveal if the best man with the sword was required to give a long and embarrassing toast at the wedding banquet.

Likewise, the maid of honor was not the bride’s BFF and sorority sister.  Rather the maid of honor was from the groom’s family.  She did not flounce and puff the bride’s train.  Her task before the wedding was to examine the bride to attest to her virginity.  (Things that make you want to go, “yeewh!”)  So, too, history does not tell us if she was required to buy an over-priced, ugly dress that she would never wear again.

But, by marriage the bride was also given authority.  As a sign of such authority, the groom gave the bride a ring.  It was not a band of gold encrusted with diamonds and shimmering gems.  Those came later in history.  The groom gave the bride a signet ring of the family crest.  While he was off slaying dragons or on religious crusades or conventions in Reno, the bride had authority to use the ring to seal business and family documents making them legal and binding.

I’m sure Wikipedia might tell us about oodles more customs and traditions. Don’t get me wrong.  I love to do weddings.  I am just uncomfortable, however, when traditions stand in the way of reality of life and the profession of love before God and the community.  Let us hear the Word of God, recite vows of our earthly love and fidelity, put a ring on the finger, a kiss on the chops and I am good to go.  We can fill in the blanks from there.