Etiquette Throwback: 1922, Emily Post, Etiquette - Bridesmaids and Ushers' Dinner
Let's look at how in 1922 Emily addressed the night before the wedding.
Emily Post, Etiquette, 1922 - Bridesmaids and Ushers’ Dinner
Emily has a lot to say about wedding planning, the different roles and responsibilities, and, of course, the various parties and events leading up to the wedding. Here she takes us through different norms for the night before the wedding, and the wedding rehearsal. It differs from how we advise couples today, and it’s interesting to see how.
*Please note that grammar and spelling in the following excerpt follow 20th century standards.
Chapter XXI
FIRST PREPARATIONS BEFORE A WEDDING
BRIDESMAID AND USHERS’ DINNER
If a wedding is being held in the country, or where most of the bridesmaids or ushers come from a distance, and they are therefore stopping [staying] at the bride’s house, or with her neighbors, there is naturally a “dinner” in order to provide for the visitors. But where the wedding is in the city—especially when all the members of the bridal party live there also— the custom of giving a dinner has gone rather out of fashion.
If the bridal party is asked to dine at the house of the bride on the evening before the wedding, it is usually with the purpose of gathering a generally irresponsible group of young people together, and seeing that they go to the church for rehearsal, which is of all things the most important. More of the rehearsal is in the afternoon, after which the young people go to the bride’s house for tea, allowing her parents to have her to themselves on her last evening home, and giving her a chance to go early to bed so as to be as pretty as possible on the morrow.
Several things come to mind when reading this passage. There is a clear divide between a city wedding, where the bridal party all reside in that city, and a country wedding, where the bridal party (and, of course, other guests) are visiting from out of town. Out-of-town bridal party participants should be provided for just as you would a houseguest who was visiting.
While many couples live together today before getting married, in Emily’s day, this was less common, and because of that, we get a very sweet picture painted of parents and a bride who might enjoy a last night together before their daughter weds and moves into her own house (or that of her husband’s family.) Antiquated for sure, but sweet as well. Not quite as sweet is Emily’s view of what is essentially the rehearsal dinner we advise today. While modern weddings find convenience in having a rehearsal the afternoon before the wedding which has been logically followed by a dinner for those who had to attend the rehearsal, in Emily’s era, this was in some ways considered the “herding cats” approach and was to be used when the bridal party was so irresponsible that they couldn’t be trusted to show up to the rehearsal on their own.
We wonder what Emily would have said about the host’s responsibility to out-of-town wedding guests, as this is a question that we still receive regularly on The Awesome Etiquette Podcast today. The answer is that hosts who want to, or feel they need to, make arrangements for out-of-town guests the evening of the rehearsal may certainly do so, although it is not a must, and there are a variety of ways to do it: hosting, getting others to host, making the rehearsal dinner open to all guests, and offering insight into finding or even help booking other local options. Whatever you choose, we are sure Emily would agree that the key to making the night before the wedding go well is clear communication about whatever option works best for your situation.
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We hope you enjoyed a look back at the original Emily Post advice for the rehearsal dinner. Have a memory from your wedding you’d like to share with us as we research our next wedding book? Tell us about it in the comments, or if you’d like to be part of our next audio series, submit it with the form at this link. Can’t post here because you aren’t a Community Member yet? Head over to Monday’s podcast post, where comments are open to all.
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Lizzie and Dan
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