WEDDINGS

See Also: CHRISTMAS; FOLK TRADITIONS; MENU

Wedding Cakes

St Bride's Church (1678) was designed by the architect Sir Christopher Wren. The building's spire (1703) inspired William Rich (1755-1811), a local pastry cook, to devise the tiered wedding cake.

Location: St Bride's Passage, EC4Y 8AU (purple, orange)

Website: www.stbrides.com

Left Out In The Rain

The poet W.H. Auden described his face as looking like a wedding cake that had been left out in the rain . He had Touraine-Solente-Gol syndrome, a genetic condition.

Location: 78 Clarendon Road, W11 2HW (blue, orange)

The Queen Victoria Memorial

The Queen Victoria Memorial (1911) stands in front of Buckingham Palace. In the taxi trade's slang it is known as the Wedding Cake .

Location: The Mall, SW1A 1AA (orange, blue)

Website: www.rct.uk/collection/404351/the-unveiling-of-the-queen-victoria-memorial-16-may-1911

Wedding Dresses

In the Middle Ages and Early Modern era green was associated with weddings. It represented fecundity.

In the 18^thC white tended to be worn by people who were wealthy. It was one of several colours that were used for wedding dresses; the royal family tended to use cloths that had gold or silver thread in them. By the 1790s the influence of neoclassicism led women to wear more white clothes than they had previously. It was used for wedding dresses and remained.

In the early 19^thC the colour of the bride's dress had usually been blue. However, Queen Victoria had some white lace that she wanted incorporated in her dress. A decision was made that the dress should match the lace in colour.

Queen Victoria was entitled to marry wearing her monarchical robes. By choosing not to do so she was putting herself at the same level as Albert. In her use of white she was following an existing fashion. Her wedding image went around the world on a variety of items.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert married in 1840. Fourteen years later they restaged the event so that it could be photographed. The resulting images helped to establish white wedding dresses.

See Also: GARMENT, TYPE OF

Veils

The veil was a French innovation. It began to appear at wealthy weddings in the 1820s. The bonnet continued to be widespread until the 1840s.

Wedding Waistcoats

In the 1730s men wore white waistcoats to their weddings.

Wedding Lists

The General Trading Company (Mayfair) was founded in 1920 by the Part family. The business's original premises were in Grantham Place off Park Lane. The invention of the wedding list is credited to Colonel Part. He devised it as a means for enabling people to buy what a couple wanted without there being a risk of duplication. In 1962 the General Trading Company relocated to premises at the southern end of Sloane Street. The business appears to have ceased trading.

Location: 91 Pelham Street, SW7 2NJ

Website: wwwgeneraltradingcompany.co.uk

David Backhouse 2024