Discreetly genteel...
Posted by The Mysterious H.C. on June 17, 1998 at 12:13:29:
In response to wedding traditions, written by mishel on June 16, 1998 at 18:11:51
Actually, in Jane Austen's time the genteel rural middle classes frequently made a point of not placing too much emphasis on the wedding ceremony itself, or indulging in any showy vulgar display. You can read something about this in James Edward Austen-Leigh's 1870 Memoir (reprinted in the back of the Penguin edition of Persuasion); also, in Emma, it's Mrs. Elton who complains of Emma's wedding:
"The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own. -- "Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! -- Selina would stare when she heard of it." -- But in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union."
I'm sure there were village traditions and elegant London aristocratic high-society weddings, but I doubt you'll find all that much of what you're looking for within Jane Austen's own social circle...
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