 Love & Happiness
 The best length for an engagement was six to twelve months. Diamonds were not yet popular; engagement rings were set with pearls, turquoise, or other stones. Because the bride would never remove her wedding ring, it would be made of heavy plain gold. The women usually gave the man a ring as well.
Summer was the time for fashionable weddings. Victorian middle-class brides were married in a colored dress. The dress for the wedding would be new but made in a style that could later be used for making calls and going to church for the following year.
The bride wore a delicate white veil covering her head and upper body, whatever the color of her dress might have been. Wedding dresses that are seen in museums are wine velvet, deep purple silk, and bronze taffeta. White gowns were not common until the 1870's. Orange blossoms become the traditional bridal wreath by the 1840's. Other flowers were provided for male wedding guests to wear as favors.
Until the 1890's men in the wedding party did not usually were black; they wore coats of wine, purple, or blue with trousers of a paler shade. The frock coat, in the 1880's was replaced by the mourning coat. The bridegroom had only one attendant, traditionally his brother or his closest friend.
The bride how ever had up to twelve bridesmaids. The bridesmaids gowns were of similar styles, not necessarily the same color or identical. A bride who was "in society" was presented to the queen a second time, after the wedding, as a married woman. White become traditional partly for that reason.
A church wedding could not be private, because the law prohibited any marriage from taking place behind closed doors. The bridegroom and best man waited at the alter. The bridesmaids
took position at the door after the guests arrived at the church. The bride enter on her father's arm.
After the wedding, the bride and the bridegroom went to the vestry, where the clergyman filled in the register. This was signed by the couple and two or three witnesses. After the bride had cut the cake and changed to her traveling clothes, the newly married couple were on their way for their wedding trip!
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