Prince Charming Through the Ages

As little girls, we always dreamt about our dream wedding as a magical, fairy-tale experience where Prince Charming shows up and you both live happily ever after. In these dreams we always see an elegant white dress, our dad walking us down the aisle to give us away, a fancy ballroom, and a honeymoon in a tropical island. While many of these ideas change over time as we grow older, the main picture is still there. We all want our wedding to be perfect and a day we can remember for the rest of our life. This is no modern-day dream. On the contrary, little girls have been dreaming about the same thing for years. Weddings today are quite extravagant; that dream hasn’t died down yet. Women want their wedding day to be perfect and so they spend countless months fixing all the quirks, planning the reception, organizing seating charts, ordering the best of the best, etc. A wedding now a days consists of the ceremony, reception, and honeymoon. We start off at the church, or the place the ceremony is being held, where everyone waits for the bride to walk down the aisle. Before the bride makes her grand entrance, the music starts and the flower girls walk down the aisle dropping petals on the floor. Then comes the ring bearer and after that the bride’s maids walk down and stand to the left. Finally, we see the bride being escorted by her father down the aisle to her soon to be husband. The music changes here to the song the bride walks to, usually the bridal march, and everyone stands up and turns around to look at her march down the aisle. The bride and groom exchange their vows and exchange rings, the priest marries them and finally they share a kiss sealing their matrimony. Then everyone walks out the church and rice is thrown to symbolize fertility. After all this occurs, everyone meets at the place the reception is being held. Here the married couple celebrates their marriage. There is music, dancing, food, toasts from the family, best man and maid of honor, cake, tossing of the bouquet, tossing of the garter, and finally the newly weds depart for their honeymoon. While this is what we all expect from a wedding, things weren’t always this way.

Back in the 1920s, weddings were quite different. People were a lot less formal. Not everyone went for the traditional wedding so many eloped. The 20s was the time of prohibition, so unless the alcohol was fabricated in a bathtub in your home, no alcohol would be found at a wedding. While modern-day brides would beg for their father to give them away, women in the 20s begged for them to stay away. The ‘old folks’ were often almost crowded out of wedding affairs. Brides would get married in the most unusual places, and some brides even wore black velvet wedding dresses. While all this unconformity took place, the actual vows were traditional and solemn. The songs played at the weddings told the story of the love shared between the bride and groom. The two most popular songs during the 20s were “I Love You Truly” and “O Promise Me.” Women in these times also married very young, usually in their late teens or early twenties.

While this isn’t exactly what we are used to seeing, there were some weddings that are more traditional in our eyes. Some women chose the old fashioned way of marriage and married in a church, with a flowing white gown, appropriate music, and many of the things we are used to seeing today at a wedding.

Another similarity between these two time periods is the wedding and engagement rings. Much like today, women expected an engagement ring when asked for their hand in marriage. The wedding rings and engagement rings were supposed to be a match and white gold or platinum were preferred over yellow gold. Today, a woman will expect a 14kt gold ring with a diamond as their engagement ring. The wedding ring could be a plain gold ring; both rings are worn after the ceremony.

While these traditions are similar and different in their own ways, the day a woman gets married is one of the most important days of her life and this day will never be forgotten. We all get rescued by our prince charming on our wedding day.