The
proper attire at wedding and formal breakfasts, as
at all festivals before dinner,
is a morning dress. The gentlemen should wear frock-coats, and light
vests and trousers, and the dames their usual morning visiting
drapery. The male visitor ordinarily enters the drawing room with his
hat in his hand, and the female will always, unless very intimate,
present herself with her bonnet on her head. The guests take their
places with all the ceremony of a formal banquet. The bride and
bridegroom always have the precedence in the procession to the
refreshment-room, and others take their position according
to rank and age. The cavalier, in escorting his dame, should always
give her his right arm.
| "Presents
are expected... they are often of a marvelous inappropriateness." |
Presents
are expected
from the connections and friends, and the quantity and
value of these have become of late so excessive, that the obligation
to give them is felt by all but the richest and most prodigal to be
very burdensome. They are often of a marvelous inappropriateness. We
have known a silver tureen sent to a young couple whose prospects in
life hardly indicated the probability of even a regular supply of the
simple pot of soup which good Henry the Fourth of France wished to be
the least daily portion of every one of his subjects. The presents,
with the cards of the givers attached, are sent some days before the
reception, that they may
be displayed on the occasion. This public show of the donatives of the
prodigal seems to have been ingeniously designed for the purpose
of-stimulating the lagging generosity of others, and thus keeping up a
practice very grateful, no doubt, to each recipient, but exceedingly
painful to most givers.
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"On
the bridal couple's return they... expect the usual succession
of dinners and evening parties."
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On
the bridal couple's return
they expect visits from all those to whom bridal cards have been sent,
and the usual succession of dinners and evening
parties, after which they lose their distinctive character, and become
incorporated into the vast mass of ordinary people.
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