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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm trecb will Sit and I'm Holly Fry. So usually

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Speaker 1: on our show you've been listening for a while, you

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Speaker 1: know this. We try to take a broad look at

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Speaker 1: history and encompass as much of the world as we can,

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Speaker 1: and we especially try to do this when we're talking

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Speaker 1: about the history of something like colors are knitting or

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Speaker 1: peanut butter, and even when we've talked about the something

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Speaker 1: being an American product, like spam, we've also tried to

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Speaker 1: look at how spam made its way into other cultures

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Speaker 1: and cuisines. So today's episode is really not that uh.

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Speaker 1: For about the last eighteen months, various folks have asked

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Speaker 1: us to talk about wedding history, either a complete history

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Speaker 1: of marriage, which is way too broad for a thirty

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Speaker 1: minutes show, or sort of a history of various wedding

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Speaker 1: traditions and where they come from. So I started trying

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Speaker 1: to research that one, and the research led me in

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a different direction, which is a

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Speaker 1: brief history of the so called white wedding. So the

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Speaker 1: term white wedding was first coined in the spring of

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Speaker 1: eighteen forty in the British monthly Metropolitan magazine, and at

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Speaker 1: the time a white wedding was just the wedding in

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Speaker 1: which the bride were a white dress, but since then

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Speaker 1: it's come to suggest some other particular rituals and kind

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Speaker 1: of trappings. So that's we're gonna talk about today. We

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Speaker 1: definitely know that they are all kinds of beautiful and

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Speaker 1: touching and fascinating wedding traditions from all over the world

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Speaker 1: and all over history, and even within the United States.

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Speaker 1: There are tons and tons of regional and cultural and

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Speaker 1: religious specifics. But what we're really talking about today is

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Speaker 1: this idea of the white wedding, particularly in Britain and

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Speaker 1: the United States, and some of the things that have

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Speaker 1: become most closely associated with it. First up the piece,

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Speaker 1: most listeners probably know the very basics of already white

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Speaker 1: wedding dresses are just about ubiquitous today because Queen Victoria

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Speaker 1: got married in one in eighteen forty. Before that, there

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Speaker 1: was a lot more variety and wedding dresses, including white ones,

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Speaker 1: and most people, particularly outside of the aristocracy, basically got

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Speaker 1: married in the best clothing that they owned. It was

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Speaker 1: often their church clothes or a new dress that they

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Speaker 1: intended to use for special events going forward from their wedding.

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Speaker 1: You did not get married in a white dress. Heck no,

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Speaker 1: I'm a spiller. No, I got married in a red

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Speaker 1: dress because I got married at Christmas and I'm ridiculous

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Speaker 1: and I spill things, so anything pale was going to

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Speaker 1: be a danger. So for people that thought it was

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Speaker 1: like a big cultural statement on my part, and I

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Speaker 1: was doing some Jezebel jam. I just spilled stuff and

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Speaker 1: I don't look great in white, So that was pretty

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Speaker 1: much the motivation. And you're actually not getting married in white.

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Speaker 1: I'm also not getting married in white. I'm getting married

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Speaker 1: in blue because I want to and because it's beautiful

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Speaker 1: on you. Oh, thank you. So a little about the

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Speaker 1: couple of Victor Area and Albert before we get to

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Speaker 1: their actual wedding and what she was wearing, because this

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Speaker 1: wedding is going to come up again. Victoria met her

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Speaker 1: future husband, Albert of Saxe cober Gota in eighteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: when she was sixteen and not yet on the throne.

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Speaker 1: He had been invited to London for her seventeenth birthday celebration.

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Speaker 1: Albert and Victoria were cousins, and Albert had actually heard

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Speaker 1: when he was small that probably he ought to get

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Speaker 1: married to Victoria one day, so that was an idea

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Speaker 1: that was already in his head. And at this first meeting,

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Speaker 1: Victoria was immediately taken with him. She thought he was handsome,

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Speaker 1: and the two of them spent a lot of time

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Speaker 1: together during this visit. Victoria was terribly sad when Albert

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Speaker 1: left for Brussels that June, and she wrote his father

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Speaker 1: Leopold a letter saying quote, I must thank you, my

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Speaker 1: beloved uncle, for the prospect of great happiness you have

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Speaker 1: contributed to give me in the person of dear Albert.

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Speaker 1: Allow me, then, my dearest uncle, to tell you how

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Speaker 1: delighted I am with him, and how much I like

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Speaker 1: him in every way. He possesses every quality that could

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Speaker 1: be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible,

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Speaker 1: so kind, and so good and so amiable to he

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Speaker 1: has besides the most pleasing and delightful exterior in appearance

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Speaker 1: you can possibly see. And from there she basically admonishes

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Speaker 1: her uncle to keep her cousin safe for her. She

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Speaker 1: liked him a She liked him heat. It's one of

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Speaker 1: the things that makes me love Victoria is just her

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Speaker 1: adoration of Albert. Uh, It's so touching and sweet to me. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: once she had ascended to the throne and decided she

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Speaker 1: was getting ready to get married, which she didn't do immediately,

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Speaker 1: she invited Albert and his brother Ernst to Windsor Castle

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Speaker 1: in October of eighteen thirty nine, essentially to choose between

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Speaker 1: the two of them for the sake of strengthening political ties.

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Speaker 1: And she was basically set on Albert to be her

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Speaker 1: husband the minute she saw him again, probably to be honest,

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Speaker 1: even before that. She proposed a few days later, and

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Speaker 1: then wrote in her diary, Oh to feel I was

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Speaker 1: and am love by such an angel as Albert was

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Speaker 1: too great delight to describe. He is perfection. Oh how

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Speaker 1: I love and adore him? I cannot say. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: just in case anybody uh raised an eyebrow, I bet

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Speaker 1: most of our listeners would know. But she had to

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Speaker 1: propose to him, Yeah, people try to would not have

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Speaker 1: been cool for a non a man who was not

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Speaker 1: her equal to propose to her as queen. Sometimes people

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Speaker 1: like sort of describe that as as a feminist statement

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Speaker 1: in some way. No, she was the monarch. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: just would have been completely inappropriate for him to to

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Speaker 1: ask her to marry him, right. That was That was

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Speaker 1: the protocol. That was how it went. Uh. And they

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Speaker 1: married on February tenth, eighteen forty, with Albert in a

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Speaker 1: British Field Marshal's uniform. And here's how Victoria described her

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Speaker 1: own wedding outfit in her diary quote, I wore a

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Speaker 1: white satin dress with a deep flounce of hunted and

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Speaker 1: lace and imitation of an old design. My jewels were

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Speaker 1: my Turkish diamond necklace and earrings, and Dear Albert's beautiful

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Speaker 1: sapphire brooch. She also had a wreath of orange blossoms

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Speaker 1: on her head, and the dress had a long train

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Speaker 1: which twelve train bearers carried, and these train bearers were

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Speaker 1: also in white, with wreaths of roses in their hair.

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Speaker 1: There are paintings of the wedding, or there are photos

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Speaker 1: of her in the dress later on, but in terms

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Speaker 1: of the wedding itself, most of what exists now is paintings.

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Speaker 1: It definitely looks like a capital W, capital D wedding dress, Like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: for sure, you can put it on a bride today,

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Speaker 1: it would be right at home. Yeah, No one would

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Speaker 1: be like, that doesn't look like a wedding dress. They

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Speaker 1: would be like, that looks like a very stylized wedding dress.

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Speaker 1: But it clearly reads as a wedding dress. And apart

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Speaker 1: from the fact that Victoria tended to be a trend

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Speaker 1: setter in terms of things that we now think of

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Speaker 1: as traditional, including, for example, Christmas trees, this wedding dress

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Speaker 1: was a big deal and it was a huge public spectacle.

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Speaker 1: The last time a reigning Queen of England had gotten

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Speaker 1: married was fifteen fifty four, so you can imagine how

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Speaker 1: much anticipation surrounded this wedding, and it was of course

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Speaker 1: a big deal for the couple too. They were apart

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Speaker 1: for much of their engagement because Albert had to settle

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Speaker 1: his affairs before he could move to London permanently. Victoria

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Speaker 1: certainly was not the first woman ever in history to

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Speaker 1: get married in a white dress. She was not even

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Speaker 1: the first royal woman to get married in a white dress,

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Speaker 1: but it quickly became the fashion among England's most affluent women,

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Speaker 1: and from there it started to spread out into the

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Speaker 1: rest of British society, and then onto the United States

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Speaker 1: and elsewhere within about a decade. This is what really

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Speaker 1: cracks me up. People were writing about white wedding dresses

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Speaker 1: as though they had always been the standard thing to wear.

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Speaker 1: In August of eighteen forty nine, when covering the Etiquette

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Speaker 1: of the Trousseau, H. Goadie's Ladies Book began with quote,

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Speaker 1: custom has decided from the earliest ages that white is

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Speaker 1: the most fitting hue. And at this point, Victoria's white

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Speaker 1: wedding dress was only nine years in the past. It

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Speaker 1: was definitely not back to the earliest ages. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: definitely um uh uh, some flowery pros around it that

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Speaker 1: gives it some fake history, and that will happen again

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Speaker 1: more times in this episode. Yeah. That same piece that

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Speaker 1: Tracy dis referenced also advocates white flowers for the bride,

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Speaker 1: preferably orange blossoms, which Queen Victoria had worn in her hair,

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Speaker 1: or white rosebuds and blast bouquets as an awkward fashion

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Speaker 1: meant to solve the problem of what to do with

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Speaker 1: your hands during the ceremony. Orange blossoms continue to be

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Speaker 1: a very popular wedding flower throughout the Victorian era. I

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Speaker 1: don't think they really are. I don't know about it

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Speaker 1: in Britain, but in the US when you look at

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Speaker 1: lists of most popular wedding flowers, like, you don't really

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Speaker 1: have orange blossoms up at the top anymore. No, you

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Speaker 1: can hear a little more about Victoria and Albert's wedding

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Speaker 1: as well as for other historical weddings in the past.

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Speaker 1: Episode five show Stopping Historical Weddings, which was hosted by

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Speaker 1: a pretty rare pairing of past hosts of Stuffy Miss

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Speaker 1: and History Class. It is Sarah and Candice, so it

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Speaker 1: is post Katie Predablina in the host arc of our show. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And after we have a brief sponsor break, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about cake. Now a cake. Yes, cakes have been

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Speaker 1: part of wedding celebrations across many cultures, going all the

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Speaker 1: way back to antiquity, although to be clear, sometimes the

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Speaker 1: word cake has been a catch all kind of term

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Speaker 1: for all kinds of cakey, bready, biscuity kind of things,

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Speaker 1: so it didn't necessarily mean cake, uh like people think

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Speaker 1: of today. But today the stereotypical wedding cake is this

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Speaker 1: teared confection. It is often white. Sometimes there are pillars

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Speaker 1: between the tears, and there's usually a topper on top,

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Speaker 1: and we once again look to the Victorians for that pattern.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a topp around your cake? Well, yes

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Speaker 1: and no, uh we we are not having a tiered

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Speaker 1: wedding cake. We have a thing that will serve as

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Speaker 1: a topper, but it's probably going to be a table

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Speaker 1: decoration and not physically on the cake because the cakes

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Speaker 1: are being brought by our caterer and uh, we won't

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Speaker 1: necessarily have somebody on hand to touch up the frosting

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Speaker 1: or whatever, just just curious. We will, in the fact,

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Speaker 1: have four cakes. One of them, when you eat it

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Speaker 1: will turn your teeth and tongue and lips blue because

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Speaker 1: it is very, very blue in color. I can't wait.

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Speaker 1: We had a Star Wars action figures. I know a

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Speaker 1: couple of people who have done that. I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to spoil what what it is, but uh, it's not.

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Speaker 1: It's not out of place in the realm of a

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Speaker 1: world where people have Star Wars action figures as their topper.

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Speaker 1: But back to our story. In eighteenth century Britain, the

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Speaker 1: typical wedding cake was a plum cake. And when we

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Speaker 1: say plum, what that means is dried fruits, not just plums,

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Speaker 1: and that had ties to foods that had been around

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Speaker 1: since the medieval period. It was one low layer of

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Speaker 1: fruitcake covered in almond paste and topped with a stiff

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Speaker 1: white sugar icing. And this is the traditional cake served

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Speaker 1: at weddings in Britain for at least a century. Learning

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Speaker 1: this answered a question that had always confused me, which

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Speaker 1: is that we would be watching a movie or a

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Speaker 1: TV show or something that was set in in in

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Speaker 1: Britain and it had a wedding as a scene, and

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Speaker 1: somebody would say they didn't like wedding cake, and I

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Speaker 1: would always be like, what do you mean you don't

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Speaker 1: like wedding cake? It is cake at a wedding. How

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Speaker 1: I don't understand, And it's because, uh, like in Britain

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Speaker 1: wedding cake is a different thing than like birthday cake,

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Speaker 1: or at least it was that. Well, it's just so

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Speaker 1: you can still I don't actually know if if if

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Speaker 1: today most people use um like a plum cake, is

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Speaker 1: their wedding cake in Britain or not? You definitely there

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Speaker 1: are lots of recipes and stuff online if you're interested

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Speaker 1: in seeing what the ingredients are like. So Anyway, this

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Speaker 1: idea of a sort of low flat plum cake as

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Speaker 1: a wedding cake started changing after the French Revolution. With

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Speaker 1: this influx of French chefs and French foods into Britain

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Speaker 1: and towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially

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Speaker 1: in aristocratic families, food including the food that was served

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Speaker 1: at weddings, increasingly became a mark of status. Bigger, fancier foods,

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Speaker 1: ideally prepared by a French master chef, was really just

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Speaker 1: the thing to do, and French chefs started experimenting with

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Speaker 1: more elaborate cakes. Queen Victoria's cake was a lavishly decorated

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Speaker 1: plum cake. It was ten ft in diameter. It weighed

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Speaker 1: three hundred pounds. That's a lot of cake. It was

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Speaker 1: technically a one layer cake, although it's topper did have

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Speaker 1: a teared look, and decor rations on the cake included

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Speaker 1: a sculpture of Britannia blessing the couple, who were dressed

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Speaker 1: in Roman clothing and surrounded by children and animals. It

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Speaker 1: was also covered in the hard white sugar icing that,

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Speaker 1: thanks to its association with Victoria's wedding cake, you would

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Speaker 1: now recognize under the name of royal icing. The first

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Speaker 1: tiered wedding cake debut at London's Crystal Palace in eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty one. We've had an episode about the Crystal Palace

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Speaker 1: in the Arcove. And by the time Victoria and Albert

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Speaker 1: Albert's children started to get married, the idea of wedding

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Speaker 1: cake in Britain was quite established as this multiple tiered

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Speaker 1: plum cake. When her oldest daughter, Princess Victoria married Frederick

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Speaker 1: Wilhelm of Prussia in eighteen fifty eight, that couple's cake

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Speaker 1: was a colossally tall and heavily adorned triple layer cake,

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Speaker 1: although only the bottom layer was actually cake. The upper

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Speaker 1: ones were really made of this icing and not meant

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Speaker 1: to be eaten less you loved eating plain royal icing.

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Speaker 1: I was just gonna say I would totally eat this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: At King George, the fifth wedding in that cake had

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Speaker 1: four tiers separated by columns. By the nineties, cake decorators

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Speaker 1: were also using piping to decorate cakes, and that was

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Speaker 1: a technique that had been around since the middle of

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Speaker 1: the century, but it really hadn't fallen into heavy use

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Speaker 1: until then. Wedding cake in Britain continued to be this

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Speaker 1: tiered fruit cake with royal icing until the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: at which points softer icing and sugar flowers started to

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Speaker 1: become more popular than the really stiff royal icing had

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Speaker 1: been before, and the United States really followed Britain's trend

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Speaker 1: in terms of the basic shape of a wedding cake

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Speaker 1: with tears and sometimes columns. I think columns seem to

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Speaker 1: be kind of out of fashion now, but I know

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Speaker 1: when I was a child and people would talk about

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Speaker 1: weddings like columns between the tears. It's a really big thing.

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Speaker 1: In the eighties it was huge. Yeah, But you know,

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Speaker 1: in the United States, the cake itself has normally been cake,

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Speaker 1: not um cake like cake made of flour and sugar

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Speaker 1: and things, and not lots of dried fruit in there. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And things are also loosening up a lot around wedding

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Speaker 1: cake designs. A lot of them are still the same

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Speaker 1: basic tiered shapes, but colors and decorations have really branched out.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure people have seen online those um pieces of

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Speaker 1: footage of cakes that have projections onto them so that

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Speaker 1: before you cut into it. Disney does them for some

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Speaker 1: of their weddings, and I've seen them at at other

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Speaker 1: events where there are things that are like animated dancing

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Speaker 1: around the cake before you cut into it. But that's

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Speaker 1: that's obviously not on the cake. It's projected. That's fun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But the idea of a groom's cake emerged in Britain

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Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century, but it eventually fell out of

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Speaker 1: favor there. It was basically smaller than the bride's cake,

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Speaker 1: also full of fruit, and it was cut up and

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Speaker 1: given to guests to take home as a symbol of

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Speaker 1: good luck. The groom's cake morphed into a cake that

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Speaker 1: was decorated according to the groom's tastes, often stereotypically masculine

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Speaker 1: hobbies in the United States. Eight, we're not having a

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Speaker 1: groom's cake because, as we said before, having four normal cakes,

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Speaker 1: not a wedding cake. Yeah, we didn't have a groom's

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Speaker 1: cake either, but part of that was a space issue.

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Speaker 1: We got married in a movie theater, like a little

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Speaker 1: arthouse cinema, and there just wasn't that much space to

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Speaker 1: lay out food, so we had to be pretty judicious

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Speaker 1: in our choices. Nice. Yeah, you want to talk about

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Speaker 1: wedding rings now, Yeah, we're gonna talk about wedding rings,

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Speaker 1: and these have really also been around like cakes since antiquity.

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Speaker 1: We know that wedding rings existed in ancient Grease and

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Speaker 1: and in Rome, and they may have evolved from the

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Speaker 1: practice of breaking a coin in half, with one half

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Speaker 1: of the coin going to each half of the couple.

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Speaker 1: There's been huge variation through the ages about how rings

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Speaker 1: have been worn, what they were made of, whether they

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Speaker 1: had stones and if so, what kind, and whether they

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Speaker 1: were part of the wedding ceremony at all. Some religions

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Speaker 1: wedding services have included exchanges of rings or giving a

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Speaker 1: ring to the bride from the groom, while others have

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Speaker 1: strictly forbidden that practice as being a mark of vanity.

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Speaker 1: So basically, throughout most of history, rings have been associated

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Speaker 1: with weddings and a lot of the world, but they

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Speaker 1: were not standardized and for a very long time. And

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Speaker 1: the same is actually true of engagement rings. So like

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Speaker 1: white wedding dresses, today they seem almost ubiquitous, but at

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Speaker 1: various points in history they have almost entirely disappeared. Often

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Speaker 1: rings have still been given as a token of affection,

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Speaker 1: but not necessarily as a formal sign of engagement. This

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Speaker 1: sort of uh, non standard all over the place, whatever

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Speaker 1: you want. Treatment of rings and engagement rings really started

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Speaker 1: to shift in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,

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Speaker 1: following the following the discovery of diamond mines in South Africa.

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Speaker 1: That is when jewelry makers started advertising engagement rings as

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Speaker 1: a necessity, and that included an attempt to establish engagement

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Speaker 1: rings for men as a standard, but that didn't really

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Speaker 1: ever take off. In de Beers hired n W. A

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Speaker 1: er And as its advertising agency, and the agency began

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Speaker 1: positioning diamonds as rare, important family heirlooms. By nineteen forty three,

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Speaker 1: a clear majority of women in the US for being

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Speaker 1: given diamond engagement rings. In Night, copywriter Francis Garrity coined

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Speaker 1: the slogan a diamond is Forever that is still being

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Speaker 1: used today, basically cementing the idea that the diamond was

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Speaker 1: the only stone suitable for an engagement ring, and with

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Speaker 1: that came the idea that when a woman got married,

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Speaker 1: her wedding ring would be worn alongside her diamond engagement ring.

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Speaker 1: Also in the nineteen forties was a marketing push by

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Speaker 1: jewelers to get couples to buy two rings one for

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Speaker 1: the bride and one for the groom, and to have

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Speaker 1: a ceremony that included the exchange of both rings. This

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Speaker 1: gradually caught on both through deliberate efforts to educate people,

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Speaker 1: which were carried out by the jewelry companies, and through

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Speaker 1: people simply going to weddings where their friends and family

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Speaker 1: members exchanged rings with each other, rather than just the

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Speaker 1: groom giving the ring to the bride. By the nineteen fifties,

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Speaker 1: the double ring ceremony was pretty common across most denominations,

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Speaker 1: at least in the United States. I know when my

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Speaker 1: parents got married in the sixties, they had a double

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Speaker 1: ring ceremony. Oh, I just have no idea because I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess they both were rings, but I never thought

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Speaker 1: about it with my parents. But so the point is

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Speaker 1: that the double ring ceremony and the diamond engagement ring

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Speaker 1: are really pretty recent inventions, but they're ones that have

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Speaker 1: been made to seem like this is a long and

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Speaker 1: lasting tradition, basically the same thing that happened with the

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Speaker 1: white dress. And even if they're not actually ubiquitous, business

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Speaker 1: and marketers talk about them as though this is the

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Speaker 1: standard and only way. The idea of standardizing things is

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Speaker 1: a big part of why the word wedding for a

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Speaker 1: lot of people conjures up so much very specific imagery.

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Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about how that standardization came

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Speaker 1: to be after another brief word from a spotzer. So.

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Speaker 1: I have recently made probably the last pre wedding update

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Speaker 1: to the website that I built on squarespace, the one,

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Speaker 1: the one where literally two weeks before the wedding, I

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Speaker 1: was like, oh, I should take off this part that

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Speaker 1: says save the date, and I should put in part

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Speaker 1: about important details that people actually need on the day.

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Speaker 1: There you go. I was super super easy changed to make,

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Speaker 1: super intuitive. The way the website works made it extremely

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Speaker 1: easy for me to just take off the parts that

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Speaker 1: I didn't need at in the parts that I did

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Speaker 1: need without affecting all the other pieces that were already there,

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Speaker 1: and like I wanted that I didn't need to make

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Speaker 1: any kind of changes to I have been really really

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Speaker 1: happy with the look of the website that I was

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Speaker 1: able to make, how easy it was, how it really

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Speaker 1: felt like us uh and felt like something that we

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Speaker 1: were happy to have associated with our wedding without becoming

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Speaker 1: something that required me to do hours and hours of work.

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Speaker 1: It really was a matter of you know, the first

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Speaker 1: time around a couple hours sitting on my bed with

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Speaker 1: my laptop and then updating it the five or ten

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Speaker 1: minutes here and there. Really easy, awesome and intuitive. Some

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Speaker 1: great things about square space are that your sites look

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Speaker 1: professionally designed regardless of your personal skill level. You don't

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00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:12,280
Speaker 1: need to know how to code. The tools are all

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Speaker 1: very intuitive and very easy to use. You get a

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Speaker 1: free domain if you sign up for a year, which

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Speaker 1: I did, uh, And you can start your free trial

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Speaker 1: today at square space dot com. When you decide to

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00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:25,040
Speaker 1: sign up for square space, make sure to use the

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Speaker 1: offera code history to get ten percent off your first purchase.

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Speaker 1: So one more time, start your free trial today at

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Speaker 1: squarespace dot com. And when you decide to sign up,

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00:21:34,359 --> 00:21:36,480
Speaker 1: make sure to use the opera code history for ten

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Speaker 1: percent off your first purchase. And now back to our story.

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Speaker 1: So today, in the United States, weddings are nearly synonymous

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Speaker 1: with excess. The not dot com, for example, regularly publishes

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Speaker 1: the results of surveys of its users, which suggests that

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Speaker 1: the average US wedding today costs thirty one two hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirteen dollars, with half of couples spending eighty six

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Speaker 1: dollars or more. And every time they do there is

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Speaker 1: a lot of press that you could really summarize as

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Speaker 1: thirty dollars. That's absurd. Weddings nowadays are atrocious. Also, these

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Speaker 1: numbers are kind of skewed in favor of the sorts

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Speaker 1: of people planning the types of weddings that the not

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00:22:18,800 --> 00:22:23,040
Speaker 1: would be useful, right, right, Probably people who are are

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Speaker 1: going to be spending a little bit more so if

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Speaker 1: you did a survey through offbeat Bride would be probably

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Speaker 1: have very different numbers. Yet, yes, and like a practical wedding,

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Speaker 1: much smaller dollar amounts most likely. Um So. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: when when these numbers come out every year or or

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Speaker 1: as often as they come out, uh, usually the articles

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Speaker 1: written about them then go to the into the idea

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Speaker 1: that the reason for all this expense is the existence

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Speaker 1: of a wedding industry that charges couples more for weddings

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Speaker 1: than for other big events and basically pushes the idea

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Speaker 1: that the wedding needs to be a certain relatively expensive way. So, yes,

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Speaker 1: there really is a wedding industry. Is really made up

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Speaker 1: of a lot of smaller industries, and yes it is huge,

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Speaker 1: And yes, stuff costs more when it's for a wedding

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Speaker 1: rather than for some other event. And one more yes,

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Speaker 1: this collection of industries puts a lot of work into

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Speaker 1: standardizing the idea of wedding and marketing that idea two

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Speaker 1: couples and specifically to brides. Having been to a few

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Speaker 1: bridal expos oh boy, can I corroborate this? Yep? Uh? Well,

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Speaker 1: and having done things like shop for a wedding cake

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Speaker 1: and seeing how much more expensive a wedding cake is

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Speaker 1: per serving than any other cake is per serving, there's

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Speaker 1: definitely a wedding mark up in a lot of goods

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Speaker 1: and services. However, this is not a new thing. It

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00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:47,399
Speaker 1: did not come about with like the big trend in

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Speaker 1: tiered wedding cakes in the nineteen eighties. The idea of

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Speaker 1: a wedding industry and a backlash around that industry's existence

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Speaker 1: really goes back one more time to the latter half

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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, once again around the same time

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Speaker 1: that Queen Victoria got married. We're not blaming Queen Victoria

432
00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:05,879
Speaker 1: for this in this case, it's kind of coincidental. Before

433
00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:08,480
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties, in Britain and the United States, there

434
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,360
Speaker 1: really wasn't one standard thing that came to mind when

435
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:14,359
Speaker 1: someone said wedding. A lot of people simply got married

436
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:16,439
Speaker 1: in the parlor of their home, or perhaps in a

437
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 1: church or a chapel. People, especially people who were not wealthy,

438
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:22,680
Speaker 1: were the nicest clothes that they already owned, and there

439
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:25,600
Speaker 1: is usually a nice meal or maybe even a dance afterward.

440
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: The right about the same time that Victoria and Albert

441
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: got married, the idea of weddings started to become a

442
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 1: lot more standardized, and the standardization affected the weddings themselves

443
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 1: and the gifts for the couple. Basically, businesses started to

444
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 1: market things, particularly to brides, as being for weddings. Advertisements

445
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:50,879
Speaker 1: positioned goods as being gifts for newlyweds. Etiquette manuals and

446
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: magazines reinforced what was expected at these weddings on the

447
00:24:54,840 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 1: part of both the couple and their guests, and people

448
00:24:57,320 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 1: started to pick up on the idea that there was

449
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: a particular their way to do a wedding as they

450
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:04,640
Speaker 1: went to the weddings of their friends and loved ones,

451
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: even if they weren't reading all these etiquette manuals and

452
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 1: looking at all these advertisements, expectations around gift giving were

453
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 1: one aspect of this nineteenth century wedding standardization. By eighteen fifty,

454
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: upper class couples could expect the value of their wedding

455
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:22,639
Speaker 1: gifts to total around twenty five thousand dollars. In the

456
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: US following the Civil War, a number of bride's diaries

457
00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: detail they're getting between one hundred and two hundred gifts,

458
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 1: many of which were specifically four and about the bride.

459
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:37,640
Speaker 1: I should note once against that we're basically talking about affluent,

460
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: mostly white couples who were writing about their gifts in

461
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 1: this case. Around this same time, silver makers also started

462
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: advertising silverware as sets that you could buy pieces of

463
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 1: to add up to the bride's full collection of play settings.

464
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 1: Companies expanded the number of patterns they offered and also

465
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: the number of types of utensils, basically with the hope

466
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 1: of selling more or silverware as wedding gifts. Advertisers also

467
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: took care to specify that silver became a keepsake and

468
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:10,640
Speaker 1: an heirloom, much like what we've already discussed, which would

469
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: happen later on in the timeline with diamonds. Other types

470
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:17,520
Speaker 1: of merchants later followed the example of silver makers, with

471
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 1: things like uh china and dinnerware and things like that

472
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: coming out in lots of patterns that you could register for.

473
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: These first efforts to market individual pieces of silverware settings

474
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,600
Speaker 1: as gifts didn't have quite the level of organization that

475
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: you see today, Like now we have registries that ticked

476
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: down the number of forks that are still needed as

477
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 1: people purchased them. And there are numerous nineteenth century diary

478
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: entries from brides bemoaning their sudden possession of dozens of

479
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:47,199
Speaker 1: coffee spoons and oyster forks. Yep, people were really just

480
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: buying up all those spoons and force. I would imagine

481
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: like the cheapest things in the settings often were the

482
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:56,159
Speaker 1: ones most popular, and since there wasn't a registry that

483
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 1: kept track of who had bought what, people would wind

484
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:03,120
Speaker 1: up with these like giant collections of spoons. So drops

485
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: in the price of silver and methods for silver plat

486
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: ng also made silver more accessible outside the upper class

487
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,399
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century, which meant that silverware pieces

488
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 1: became common gifts among a bigger range of economic classes.

489
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,720
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty eight, in Harper's New Monthly magazine, was

490
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: this passage quote, there are few families among us so

491
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: poor as not to have a few ounces of silver plate.

492
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: And for Lauren indeed must be the bride who does

493
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: not receive upon her wedding day. Some articles made of

494
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: this beautiful medal. With all this focus on wedding gift

495
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: giving came an equally firm insistence among nineteenth century etiquette manuals.

496
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 1: The brides must handwrite a thank you note to each

497
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 1: person who gave her a gift. Thanks. Nineteenth century wedding manuals,

498
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: um magazines and etiquette manuals started solidifying other aspects of

499
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: weddings as well, documenting what brides should wear to a wedding,

500
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 1: how many brides means there should be, and who should

501
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: they should be, and uh that the bride and the

502
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,639
Speaker 1: groom should arrive at the wedding venue separately, and on

503
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: and on all of the things that are very common today.

504
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 1: Etiquette manuals really standardized a lot of what was expected

505
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: at the wedding, down to the fact that the groom

506
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:11,880
Speaker 1: must look at the bride intently as she comes down

507
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 1: the aisle, right, And I feel like this whole idea

508
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: of coming down the aisle with the groom looking at

509
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: the bride. You know, in the case of of opposite

510
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: sex couples, is so like, it's so ubiquitous that even

511
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 1: when people are having a wedding that in a lot

512
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: of ways is not really traditional, that is still a

513
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: part of it. Like there is still almost always a

514
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: processional of some sort with the bride approaching the groom,

515
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: Like that's just how it works now, which I've always

516
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: felt silly, which is why mine was very silly. You'll

517
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: see today a lot of videos of people breaking into

518
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: dance and whatever. I didn't want to do that, But

519
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: what I did do was how Santa give me away?

520
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: So everybody kind of chuckled, and it was not so solemn,

521
00:28:56,840 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: and it was fun and joyous and giggly. That's sweet.

522
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: The very idea that there would be a reception following

523
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: the wedding, not just a meal or advance or a

524
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 1: social but a reception seems to have come about during

525
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: this time to According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the

526
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 1: first use of the word wedding reception and writing was

527
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: in a diary entry in eighteen seventy one. The US

528
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: resisted some of this commercial influence into weddings for at

529
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: least a little while, but by the turn of the

530
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: twentieth century, weddings were big business in the States as well,

531
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: with the price of weddings doubling between nineteen ten and

532
00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty. That trend reversed itself during the Great Depression,

533
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: but then it picked up full steam again after World

534
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:44,760
Speaker 1: War Two. Now, as we've just alluded to a few

535
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: moments ago, these standards continue to be really culturally ingrained,

536
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 1: and they hold up and continue to be the way

537
00:29:51,120 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: people do things even as the types of couples getting

538
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: married has changed. Katrina Camport of the University of California,

539
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: San Francisco actually adied wedding photographs of same sex couple's

540
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: weddings as same sex weddings became more and more common,

541
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: and she found that more than two thirds of lesbian

542
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: couples tended to have one member of the couple dressed

543
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: as the bride and the other dressed as the groom,

544
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,840
Speaker 1: while gay men tended to have both men dressed as grooms.

545
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: So this idea of what a bride looks like and

546
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 1: what a groom looks like continuing to be standard even

547
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: as the couple getting married is not so much what

548
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: has been like people's at the front of people's imagination

549
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: with the word wedding for a long time. It's a

550
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 1: fascinating industry. It is a fascinating industry. It's fascinating to

551
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: me how much of this comes off as well. This

552
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: is how it's always been, and it no, this is

553
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: how it's been mostly since the nineteenth century. I was

554
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: originally planning to research things like why we wear veils

555
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: and why there is a bouquet toss, and what I

556
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: found over and over was that all of the source

557
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: is would say the same thing, like a bridewear's a

558
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: veil to protect her from evil spirits, and a bride's

559
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: a bride has a multiple bridesmaid to protect her from

560
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:12,840
Speaker 1: evil spirits. There's a lot of protecting from evil spirits,

561
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: but none of them are actually sourced back to a

562
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: primary source at all. But when I started trying to

563
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: get to a primary source on any of it instead,

564
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 1: this led me all down the path of victorians and

565
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: their weddings. They're now just the way that most people

566
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: do it well. And whenever I read all of those,

567
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of like the evil spirits,

568
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: so many things are about evil spirits acting to all

569
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: of the wedding website. I pictured the one horrible wedding

570
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: that went awry because it was beset by evil spirits,

571
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 1: made everyone go, we gotta find ways toward these guys off. So,

572
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: like we said at the tame A show, like we

573
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: know there are so many different aspects to two weddings,

574
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: and so many different traditions and so many different pieces

575
00:31:57,680 --> 00:31:59,960
Speaker 1: of history that have led to things that people do

576
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: in weddings to day. But like this relatively narrow path

577
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: is the path the research took me down this time.

578
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: Do you also have some listener mail for us? I do.

579
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: This is actually a listener Facebook comment that I emailed

580
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: to myself so I wouldn't lose it um. And it

581
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: is from Charles and it is about our episode on

582
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: the two Paka Maru Rebellion. And Charles says, as a

583
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: retired scholar of Indian and Inca not a typo, that

584
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: is how it should be rendered, which is with a

585
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:36,960
Speaker 1: k history, anthropology and linguistics and the Ketchua language for

586
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 1: over thirty years. I liked this largely accurate but not exact.

587
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:44,320
Speaker 1: First of all, Ketchwan languages pre date the Inca Empire

588
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:49,200
Speaker 1: based on its proto uh A Mara, which is still

589
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 1: spoken and I have also studied to a lesser degree.

590
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: Here's a bit of clarification. Quetchua, as the language is

591
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: commonly referred to, is not the name of the language,

592
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 1: although it has been adopted by most as such, mainly

593
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: by socio linguists that want easy mapping and statistics. It

594
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: is the name of the people people of the High Valley.

595
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: Their name for their language was and remains Runcini, which

596
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 1: is translated as man's speech, but socio linguistic transit blurred

597
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:18,640
Speaker 1: this distinction. Quetchua as a language has evolved into many

598
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: distinct dialects that were similar in syntax but varied widely

599
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: by phonetic and phonological inventory. This was because the Andes

600
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: geologically created huge geographical separations. For example, and be Bora

601
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: Quechua from Ecuador, which has no glottal stops, is quite

602
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: distinct from Cusco or coach Obamba Quechua, where glottal stops

603
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: influence syntax, phonology, and final meaning. That is not inconceivable that,

604
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: given the broad geographical spread, that the rebellion had lacked

605
00:33:47,280 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: effective clear communication resulting in the final blood bath that

606
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 1: began on its periphery. They had no clear understanding of

607
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 1: each other. He then goes on to suggest some books

608
00:33:57,600 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: at the Inca Conquest is interesting to people, including the

609
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: concast Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming, And that

610
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: again is from Charles. Thank you so much, Charles. It

611
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:09,640
Speaker 1: is always awesome to hear from people who have specialized

612
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 1: knowledge and a particular thing um that can shed further

613
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 1: light beyond what was available in the sources that were

614
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 1: available to us. Yes, if you would like to write

615
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 1: to us about this or any other podcast, where a

616
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 1: history podcast at how stuffworks dot com. We're also on

617
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss in history and

618
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:28,960
Speaker 1: on Twitter at miss in History. Our tumbler is miss

619
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: Industry dot tumbler dot com. Our instagram is missed in History.

620
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn more about what we've

621
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:38,719
Speaker 1: talked about the day, you can come to our parent

622
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: company website, which is how stuff works dot com and

623
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: put the word royal weddings in the search bar and

624
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,440
Speaker 1: you will find an article called ten Wacky Pieces of

625
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 1: Royal Wedding Memorabilia. And this is about a whole other

626
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: odd thing that we didn't really get into, which is

627
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 1: selling souvenirs when royals get married. You can come to

628
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:57,200
Speaker 1: our website, which is missed in History dot com. You'll

629
00:34:57,239 --> 00:34:59,480
Speaker 1: find an archive of every episode we've ever done and

630
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:01,919
Speaker 1: show no it's for the episodes Holly and I have done,

631
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: and a lot of other cool stuff. So you can

632
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:05,719
Speaker 1: do all that and a whole lot more at how

633
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com or missed in History dot com.

634
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is

635
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. M