- Today we are pleased to introduce Leslie Bellais
as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's
History Sandwiched In lecture series.
Leslie is the Wisconsin Historical Society's
curator of social history,
and she's been working for the society for 27 years.
As the curator of social history,
she oversees the society's collections of costumes,
textiles, and personal artifacts,
which includes around 2,000 dresses,
250 men's suits and coats, children's clothing,
and jewelry, among many other things.
Here today to share a history if courtship and weddings,
please join me in welcoming Leslie Bellais.
[applause]
- Thank you very much, Katie.
So today I'm going to talk about rituals of romance.
This is based on an exhibit I did.
It's the first exhibit I did 27 years ago.
This was my probationary exhibit to see if I could do exhibits.
Obviously, since I'm still here, I passed.
So I just wanted to give you, let you know about that.
And also to re-say what Katie said, this covers 1830 to 1990.
So I don't go into the near present.
So I also want to point out that this is,
what I'm going to talk about today are based on trends.
This is the overall trends of what's happened
since 1830 to about 1990.
It may not reflect your family's actual experience
because there are outliers and people
who did different things.
But this is-- What I'm going to show you today
is basically what was presented today,
basically what was done in general.
So first I want to point out that this is a ritual,
what I'm going to be talking today is a ritual of romance.
American rituals of romance are fairly new,
beginning between about 1830 and 1850.
They arose at a time when a number of factors came together
to affect the way men and women courted and married.
And there are four factors that are really most important.
One is women's changing roles, which I'll go over later,
the urbanization of communities, the availability of more
man-made products, and a new concept of romanticism.
So rituals generally do not illustrate
natural human behavior.
Instead, they are prescribed actions
that feel natural because they are constantly repeated
and often learned in childhood.
So, if you think about it, wedding rituals, for example,
have been deeply ingrained into young girls
from getting like Barbie bridal dolls
or other kind of wedding dolls fairly early on.
That they sort of learn that this is something
that they should strive for or want to accomplish.
So the primary function of rituals of romance is to create
predictable chain of events that protect the participants from
the unexpected, especially during moments of transition.
They also provide an expression of solidarity.
A feeling among participants that they belong
to a unique group bigger than themselves.
And I just want to point out the pictures that you're seeing here
are mainly from our Wisconsin Historical Images collection.
So they tend to-- I've tried to mainly do Wisconsin images.
This is a church in Milwaukee.
Rituals also have other reasons for existing.
One is that they give a sense of dignity and importance
to events with the pageantry and their formality.
And they also link the past and future with the present.
Because they have been preordained,
they've been done before, and they're expected to endure,
that's how they link the future and the past.
But they are malleable and each generation can choose to change
or retain the rituals to fit their peculiar circumstances.
All these reasons explain why rituals have surrounded
courtship and the wedding ceremonies,
the rites of passage that transform people
from single to married status.
These rites are important events for most societies
because the married couple goes on usually
to create a family and that continues
and those families continue the life of the society.
So I'm going to start by talking about courtship rituals.
And the first step on the road to marriage--
I think I'll stay here-- is meeting a suitable partner.
And courtship has been sometimes a scary and uncomfortable
process that has used rituals to give the procedure structure
and to set limits of behavior for those involved.
I think these rituals of courtship have broken down more
recently, but in the past, they've been fairly significant.
Now, the first major courtship ritual was public courting.
And I should point out that these rituals,
these rituals of courtship in America have been malleable.
They generally reflect change in society so that during the early
19th century when most people lived in small communities,
courtship was a public event, like you're seeing here,
in which everyone participated.
So this is the "Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride,"
by WS Mount, from 1830.
And you can see that this is a place where men and women
could meet in a public in a supervised way.
And this was the predominant mating ritual
of the 19th century.
So, young adults who are meeting at these events
saw courtship as a structured process that led to marriage.
It created predictable chain of events
that gave men and women a way of regulating
their intimate affairs.
First they enjoyed each other's company
while participating in group activities,
such as dances, picnics, skating, sleighing.
Here's a picnic from about 1895 or an outdoor outing.
And then sometimes sleigh rides, though usually there'd be lots
of people in this kind of caravan of sleighs.
By the early '20s, many young people had singled out
one individual who they spent time with alone.
They were allowed to at this point.
And if the couple saw a future together, they became engaged.
Now, after the Civil War,
calling became the appropriate mode of courtship.
As communities became less unified, more urban, and larger,
they couldn't supervise all the courtship activities.
If you think of a small town, everyone knew who everyone was
and sort of could keep an eye on everyone.
But if you're in a bigger town, it's a bit harder to do.
So formalized rituals such as calling were adopted so that men
and women could meet privately but in controlled settings.
So here you're seeing "The First Visit."
It's an image from about 1865.
And I think it shows what the main--
where the power was in calling.
And that a man was coming into a woman's domain.
It was her space, her sphere, and she was allowed to,
she had the control over the relationship at this point.
If he came calling unannounced,
if a man came calling unannounced,
he could be turned away at the door by someone else.
And so this gave control to the woman
and let her regulate the pace of courtship.
And I think you can see in this image who's comfortable
and who's uncomfortable here and who's in control.
[laughter] And who's not.
Now, if a woman was not at home or not receiving visitors,
a man could leave his calling card.
And these are some men's calling cards from our collection.
And this way a woman could turn down a man's attention
without having to tell him directly to his face,
usually because someone else would do that for them.
So this was a comfortable way for people to meet,
and women really felt empowered by this and in control.
However, by the 1890s, a new type of courtship ritual
appeared known as dating.
And dating appeared because childhood had become longer.
And there was less need to rush to the altar at an early age.
So, consequently, dating's goal at this point
was not necessarily marriage, it could be marriage,
but it was to be in a relationship.
So this is the Saturday Evening Post cover from 1949
called "Before the Date."
You can see they're both getting ready.
Now, the two characteristics of dating
that is different from calling and courting is that
it's almost always away from the home unchaperoned.
And the second thing is that
there's often paid entertainment involved.
Now, we know that the introduction of bicycles,
and later automobiles,
made courting away from home possible.
It's not that people couldn't go on buggy rides or sleigh rides
before this, but bicycles were unique.
Bicycles for women arrived in the 1890s.
They became a huge fad.
That's women's bicycles with the drop-down bar.
I think I can do this. Yep.
So that they could ride a bicycle in a skirt,
which was the main issue.
So bicycles came around and also the women
were going off by themselves, freaking out their parents,
freaking out their guardians
that they could just hop on a bike.
You didn't really do that so much
on a horse in earlier time periods,
but you did do it with a bike.
And the kind of, women on bikes
caused all kinds of consternation.
What they should wear on a bike,
whether they're masculinizing themselves or not.
But one of the things it also did was allow women
to get on a bike and go see her boyfriend by himself
without anyone else being around.
So it's kind of interesting that Charles Dana Gibson,
in this Gibson Girl cartoon, noticed that.
Here's a couple who's been out bicycling,
and it says in the words below,
"Is bicycling bad for the heart?"
So they knew that bicycling and romance
went together hand in hand.
Later on, cars performed the same function.
And here's a Chrysler ad from 1955 that shows dating,
I believe, dating couples.
So, often when people went out on dates,
they went out to some kind of paid entertainment.
They enjoyed some kind of entertainment,
such as jaunts to the soda fountain or to the restaurant,
movies, or dances, and all of these were paid for by the man.
The man was required to take the initiative
in asking a woman out.
So this practice gave him the control
over the courtship and it's pace.
So here we're seeing two images,
one from 1903 showing a couple at a restaurant.
And I don't believe this is a married couple.
They look too intense...
[laughter] ...on each other here.
And the other one is a movie, it's not movie,
it's sheet music for a song called
"Take Your Girly to the Movies if You Can't Make Love at Home."
I don't know if you can tell but the couples in the back,
here they are,
are not paying attention to the movie very much.
And making love at this time
does not mean what it means today.
It was sort of just being romantic together and just
making out is how we would call it at this point.
So movies were a great place to go to do something like that.
And, obviously, people knew about that, that was happening,
or you wouldn't have sheet music
with that so blatantly made obvious.
So during the 1920s and 1930s,
dating began to be seen as an economic act.
One where a man asked a woman out on a date,
and the thought was that women were kind of selling their
company which men could buy by taking them out on a date.
And I have a quote that one young man from the 1930s
commented that he rarely got his money's worth.
[laughter] Ooo, yes.
So here's a dance hall with young couples in it from 1914.
You might notice it says exhibit seven or 71 above it.
I'll see if I can point that out, right there.
This is actually from a trial.
This was used in a trial to show that this bartender or this
owner of this tavern or dance hall was allowing underage kids
into the hall and letting them drink.
So these are kids who are in the 14- to 16-year range,
breaking the law so to speak.
But they're having a good time, and they're out on a date.
So, and just to kind of reinforce the thought
that this was an economic act,
I found this cartoon from 1939 in Life magazine that says:
"Wear any old dress you care to, Dolores,
"they won't pay for better than second balcony seats."
[laughter]
Both men and women were seeing these as kind of
an economic act of scarcity and abundance.
Now, during the 1920s, this competitive process was viewed
as a training ground for success-bound youth.
It was a way to practice being kind of a business person,
a successful business person in that scarcity
and abundance issues that were going on within dating.
And the other thing we know is that during this time period,
especially during the 1920s, the college students decided that
the number of one's dates designated a person's status
and popularity, so it's not important to have one, you know,
single person that you dated all the time,
but to have many dates kind of filter, you know,
filter through your life.
And, in fact, one etiquette book at the time suggested that
if a girl got stuck with one man at the dance,
which meant that no one cut in while they were dancing,
it was best to go home than be labeled unpopular.
[laughter]
So these are definitely seen as economic acts.
By the 1930s, the Depression accepted competitive energies
denied elsewhere, at least that's how social historians have seen this.
And that social success compensated for fears
that other avenues of competition were closed off.
And here's dating in the 1920s and 1930s.
We have a Saturday Evening Post cover called "Going Out,"
where little sister is watching big sister get ready.
And then we also have the University of Wisconsin's
junior prom from 1924.
It was held in the State Capitol until the Union was built.
The Memorial Union was built in '27-'28.
So here they are in the Capitol Rotunda area.
So the next thing that happened is
we had World War II and the Depression.
It really changed courtship rituals of the 1940s and 1950s
by decreasing dating's traditional competitiveness.
Teenagers in the '40s and '50s wanted security.
They didn't want to have to worry about
having lots of dates.
So they adopted a new type of dating
called going steady, which is a ritual that,
dating ritual that closely resembled marriage.
And couples became exclusive pairs,
and no one in these couples had to worry about
having a date for the Saturday night dance.
And we do know that parents disliked the concept of going
steady when it first emerged because it limited the number
of people from the opposite sex a young person would meet.
And they also greatly feared
that it would lead to premarital sex.
Now, for a couple to go steady, a pseudo-betrothal was required.
And so they usually consisted of the boy giving the girl
his school ring, letter jacket, letter sweater,
or, in this case, we're seeing here the fraternity pin.
There it is.
This fraternity pin was actually used for pinning a girl.
And it was from Lawrence College in the late '50s, early 1960s.
The person who donated it to us told us he gave it to a girl
and pinned her and they became a couple.
Later on she gave it back, which is why he had it.
And he went on to marry someone else.
But it's kind of--
Accepting this fraternity pin into the collection
was really exciting
because we knew it had this history to it.
So the act of pinning a girl often meant that the couple
considered themselves engaged to be engaged.
And the thing to keep in mind is
these were activities of school-aged youth.
Once you're out of school in the '40s and '50s,
you didn't practice marriage, you got married.
So in the '40s and' 50s, this is that baby boom era,
post-World War II era.
This is the youngest ages people ever
got married were during those about 15 years,
between '46 and '61, when the average age was
for women to get married at age 20 and men at 22.
even before this, in the Victorian era,
the average age was closer to 24 and 26.
So, the age of getting married
dropped dramatically at this time.
Now, in the mid-1960s, the practice of going steady began
to disappear as a new generation
rejected their parents traditional dating rituals.
I should just point out before I move on that this is a movie
poster from a movie called "Going Steady" from 1958.
And this is a comic book series called "Going Steady."
We have a number of their issues.
But I thought this one seemed to really capture
what going steady is all about.
And you can maybe tell that they have pins
of each other on their shirts.
So, in the mid-1960s, a new generation rejected this concept
of going steady because instead of security,
they valued freedom.
And so what you begin to see is that the sexual revolution
and the women's movement of the late '60s dramatically altered
courtship rituals by challenging the traditional rules of dating.
The result was a new freedom for couples
but also a new confusion.
People didn't know how to meet other people.
How do I make this happen?
And so, at the same time,
we also know that there are high divorce rates.
This is the beginning of high divorce rates,
more educational opportunities, especially for women,
and marriage is occurring later in life.
And what this created was a new generation,
a fairly large new generation
of older singles who are not in school.
So these singles did not have organized activities like they
would have had in school bringing them together.
So their confusion and isolation led to participating in a new
set of ventures, including singles clubs, computer dating,
and personal advertising.
Now, personal advertisements had existed before.
They dated back as long as newspapers have been around,
though usually they were asking for,
looking for a wife or husband
not a dating partner or someone to spend time with.
So disco dancing, as you can see
in this Benson & Hedges ad from 1977,
was a fad of the late '70s
that brought men and women together at night clubs.
And by the early '80s, we know that 25% of couples
met at bars, discos, or singles clubs.
So, yes, I don't know if you can see it.
It says, "If you got bopped during the bump with your soft pack, try our hard pack."
[laughter]
So dating services also became more popular,
especially computer dating.
Computer dating, if you remember at this time,
and I assume most of you remember this era,
you didn't have a computer at home.
You'd have to go to a computer dating business,
input your information, and they would put it through the
computer and tell you who you might work with.
So I picked these all up between--
These are all flyers from Madison computer dating
businesses from about 1990-1991,
as I was putting this exhibit together.
So we know that about 14% of men and 18% of women in 1980 found
their significant others through dating services
of which included computer dating services.
But, in fact, most people in this late era met people the way
they've always met people, which is through friends and family.
So 35% in 1980 met their significant other
through friends and family.
Now, historically, the reason most people court
is to find a life partner, someone to marry.
And the unique feature of this 200-year period under discussion
is that the majority of people marrying
felt that love and individual happiness
were the necessary elements for marital success.
Before this, you're thinking late 18th century and earlier,
family perpetuation, security, and economic considerations
were the primary reasons people got married.
Being an old maid put you in a financially uncomfortable
position and made you a burden to your family.
So getting married was fairly important.
Now, after the age of enlightenment,
the age of enlightenment put more emphasis on the individual
than it did on the group behavior,
where the individual sort of gets prized over the group.
So the way I kind of think of it is
that if you know your Star Trek,
it's like the Borg is no longer the strength.
It's the single individual who's the strength of the community.
So individual preference, individual happiness
now becomes more important.
The other thing is after the age of enlightenment,
what follows is the age of romanticism.
And so emotions over reason now are more important.
So how you feel emotionally becomes a significant part
of your personality and how you interact in society.
So what we do know, though, is that once you start anticipating
eternal love and happiness, which creates high expectations,
you start stressing over whether those expectations
are going to be met.
So we know that beginning in the second quarter of the 19th
century when other expectations arose, especially for women,
it caused single girls to view marriage with more anxiety
than their mothers and grandmothers had.
And this occurred as American society became more urban
and men's and women's duties more separate.
So up to this point, if you think of being agricultural
communities, women and men are on the same grounds,
like a farm, but they are doing different duties based on gender.
And this could also happen in an urban area,
where the man might be working in a shop down below
while the woman is upstairs in their apartment above.
Now there's more and more men going off to work.
What this does is now make the woman in charge of the home.
And the concept of domestic goddess starts rising
as we move into the Industrial Revolution era.
So, what happens, though, is this domestic goddess has a lot
of burdens or responsibilities placed upon her that some of
this new generation thought of as overwhelming.
You are expected now to raise your children
to be perfect, moral, religious,
everything that you'd want in a good citizen.
Also, because the man is going off into the world
which was viewed as sort of a form of hell,
the woman was supposed to create a heaven at home
that he came home to.
So, having that heaven always ready to go
put a lot of pressure on it.
So what we found out is that women of the 1830s and 1840s
approached marriage with more trepidation
than previous generations.
They felt incapable of meeting the standards of perfection
expected of them and were keenly aware that the limited amount of
freedom and independence they experienced as single girls
would be surrendered when they got married.
So what happened, men, on the other hand, I should point out,
saw marriage as an improvement to their lives.
By this time they had generally moved out of the home,
and they were often lonely.
And they wanted to start a household of their own.
Kind of become a man in the community.
And, at the same time, marriage did not,
relationship with their wife and their children did not reflect
on their self-worth as it did with women.
And so their self-worth was determined by careers,
not their abilities as husband and father
as it was with mother and wife.
So rituals appeared specifically to help women through the
traumatic transitional time of engagements, of weddings
by providing a sense of predictability and stability.
We also know by putting all these rituals into the process,
engagement rituals especially,
making a more elaborate wedding to play,
that it sort of put off the wedding
so that men usually wanted to get married like maybe next week.
And women were like, um, maybe in six, nine months,
maybe a year.
And so they had to have a reason putting it off and filling it in
with all these rituals helped explain it.
So by the 1950s, newer rituals had emerged for the traditional
engagement, and some of those include--
these are new to the 1830s, '40, and '50s-- the engagement ring,
the trousseau, the engagement party, and/or the bridal shower.
So, in fact, this is a series of prints from 1911 by Harrison
Fisher called "The Greatest Period of a Girl's Life."
And it's six prints.
Actually, after I started discovering these,
I got all six as a Christmas present one year.
So I have all six in my house, but these are the first two.
So the greatest period of a girl's life begins with
the proposal, which is what is on the left.
The next step is the trousseau,
which is putting all the stuff together.
And the last, number six, is actually
when the first baby arrives.
So, if you think about it, you have about a year-and-a-half
of your greatest period of your life and then it's all over.
[laughter] According to this.
So the trends for wedding rituals
was to make them more elaborate, formal and public.
And this happened in part because communities,
as they became larger, no longer involved themselves in the
courtship ritual, so they demonstrated their approval
of the couple by attending the wedding.
And, consequently, weddings grew in size,
more likely moved to churches, which were appropriate places
for elaborate rituals and ceremonies.
And besides the move to churches, other rituals emerged in the
first half of the 19th century and were considered traditional
in urban areas by the 1880s and in rural areas by 1900.
This all-American rituals.
So these rituals included wearing a white veil and a white
wedding dress, having bridal attendants, wedding music,
a processional and recessional, like you're seeing on this
Saturday Evening Post cover from 1953, throwing rice,
having a large reception and a white wedding cake.
These all appeared between about 1830 and 1870.
I'm just going to cover a couple of these
in a little more detail.
And the one that's most important to my heart,
being the clothing curator, is of course the wedding dress.
Now, the reason I think the wedding dress,
or we think the wedding dress becomes such an important icon
of the wedding is because it's the bride's status
that changes the most after she marries.
She is the one who will change her name,
leave her home probably,
and also now be able to bare legitimate children.
And, therefore, a wedding became a rite of passage
more for women than it did for men.
And the elaborate wedding gown has reflected the bride's
sensual and visual position.
Now, before the 1880s, most brides did not always wear a
specially-made wedding dress and often wore a best gown instead,
that they already had at hand.
Now, if a dress was made especially for the wedding,
it could be worn as a formal gown
for several years afterwards.
At least for the first year, it was considered the bridal,
your bridal dress could be worn for fancy occasions.
And that was the idea.
Now, white first appeared in the 1830s and 1840s
as an ideal color for a wedding dress
because the color connoted joy and happiness.
This was before it was viewed as virginal colors.
And then it became established very tightly and closely
in people's minds as being the appropriate color
when Queen Victoria got married in a white wedding dress
covered with lace in 1840.
And here she is in a painting marrying Prince Albert.
So that concept of a white wedding dress covered with lace
becomes the ideal, as seen on Queen Victoria's body.
Now, we know that 19th century fashion prints
always show the wedding dress as white.
So here you're seeing in 1835, sort of that joy and happiness
color fashion plate, and you're seeing an 1875 fashion plate,
also showing a white wedding dress.
However, it was not considered inappropriate for women to wear
gowns in colors, ranging from pink to black,
especially at mid-century.
And here's two from our collection, one is 1853.
This was actually worn in Mendham, New Jersey,
but it was brought to Wisconsin
when they moved out here a few years later.
And the other one was worn in Menasha in 1880.
These are both wedding dresses
just to make sure you understand that.
So these could be worn as party dresses
for the first year of marriage.
Now, by this time, as we move into the later time periods,
after the 1870s, white dresses became more closely associated
with chastity and virginity.
And so we, again, wedding-- Let me try this again.
Urban brides tended to wear the white wedding dress earlier,
more than 50% by the 1880s.
And rural weddings hit 50% of white weddings around 1900.
And here we're seeing that in actual reality.
These are two dresses
that are actually on exhibit at Villa Louis,
if you choose to go out there.
One is, the one on the left is from Milwaukee.
It's an urban dress. So it's urban bride rather.
Worn in 1884.
She is a very wealthy, she is the daughter of a millionaire,
and she married a lieutenant.
So it was a very romantic, elaborate kind of wedding.
And we know because I just found her.
The description of the wedding in the newspaper
that she had a thousand guests at her church wedding.
This is the top of the line wedding
you could have in Wisconsin in the 1880s
and it's not surprising that she wore
a white wedding dress drenched in lace.
The one on the right is from Darlington,
which is Lafayette County, 1898.
So here we are at the turn of the century in a rural community
wearing a white wedding dress.
Now, this woman also I found her description of her wedding
in the-- not the Darlington paper but the county newspaper.
And it was described as one of the biggest events
of Darlington for years past.
So she's fairly prominent within her community,
and she does choose to wear a white wedding gown,
though she's trimmed it with chiffon and not lace.
Now, during-- The concept of wearing a wedding dress
that follows fashion, continued through the 1920s.
So wedding dresses are generally supposed to be white dresses
in the latest fashion.
So as we move into the 1920s and dresses get shorter,
so do wedding dresses.
Almost all wedding dresses from the 1920s
are below the knee to mid-calf,
like you're seeing in these two.
And the one on-- Well, no.
One on the left we don't have any information about,
but the one on the right is from Mount Horeb in the 1920s.
So this is the last gasp.
The 1920s is the last gasp of when fashion and wedding fashion
are hand in hand.
In the 1930s, that changes.
And what happens is the introduction of ready-to-wear
clothes for women really takes off in the '20s
and follows into the '30s.
Up to this point, most clothes were made,
custom-made for the person.
And, also, there's a creation
of a separate wedding dress industry.
There's actually a creation of a whole bridal industry
for everything you need for the wedding,
but the wedding dress industry also appears at this time.
And they create a separate look for wedding dresses,
which is essentially a chased evening gown.
So evening gowns are usually low cut, off the shoulder, and long.
So now we've gone to a long dress but it's chased.
It's covering up the arms and it covers up the décolletage.
Interestingly, that changed around the 1990s
where often today's brides are almost always strapless,
off the shoulder something.
So they're going for a sexy look.
This was not to be sexy.
This was supposed to be chased and demur.
And so once these were worn, there was no other place to wear
them because they don't, they had no other purpose.
A chased evening gown in white has no other purpose
except to be a wedding gown.
And so they become keepsakes of the wedding
instead of something you could wear again.
And, in fact, I think the wedding dress supports what was
considered, I think, the traditional wedding dress
supports the image of a bride as a young, demur, graceful, happy,
and serene woman, like you're seeing on the cover of this
Ladies' Home Journal from 1910.
The other thing that helps--
Well, I should say that the concept of traditional weddings,
with all of its rituals, remained mainly untouched,
has remained mainly untouched since the late 19th century.
But it was not unchallenged.
And the main challenge came in the late '60s and early '70s
when people or couples not only rejected the rituals of
courtship of their parents, but also their wedding rituals.
And they rebelled against what they thought was false emotion,
obsession with material things, hollow rituals,
and competitiveness that they thought
distinguished the traditional wedding in their eyes.
So they created the alternative,
or new wedding as it was called at the time.
And these weddings were characterized
by individuality and spontaneity.
And they emphasized vows and commitment
over tradition and ritual.
They often had the following traits: an outdoor location,
untraditional wedding clothes,
organic and healthy reception food,
guests who may be asked to participate in the ceremony,
and often couple-written vows.
The dress that you're seeing on the left was worn
at an alternative wedding by a former staff member.
She was married on a farm in Dane County that included having
her dog and a mime as part of the ceremony.
[laughter]
But I couldn't find really good pictures
of alternative weddings in Wisconsin,
so you're seeing one from West Virginia
and one from Alameda, California.
Now, what happens is that we know that in 1971,
at the height of this alternative wedding,
that 80% of brides still opted to have the traditional ceremony.
And so the question became why is this new wedding failing?
In fact, in 1973, this is just two years later,
it was described as having fallen into
a predictable, repetitive mold.
And we feel that--
Historians now feel that the reason it did this is because--
Why it failed is because it didn't connect with the past.
It often excluded older family members
who didn't get it or felt uncomfortable in that situation,
it did not have the pageantry, formality,
and solemnity that gave weddings their importance
as a rite of passage.
And so, ultimately, it was not something that was accepted
by most women or most brides.
But the question still remains is why would women who viewed
themselves or were viewing themselves in the late 1960s,
early 1970s, as a new type of woman.
We were going through the feminist movement at this time.
So you would think that the traditional gown
would become passé.
But, in fact, in 1972,
at the height of the alternative wedding phase,
94% of brides still opted to wear
a traditional white wedding dress with train and veil.
So even if they had the outdoor wedding on a farm,
they might still wear the white wedding dress.
And, in fact, another wedding that I focused on in this
exhibit, the bride wore a traditional white wedding gown
and the groom wore the kind of hippie clothing.
So she still needed that white gown at this wedding.
So it's like, what appeals to modern brides?
We kind of understood in the past why this might appeal
to older brides, but why to a more modern bride.
And we think that this special dress,
which now has components of past eras,
it usually has a kind of Victorian,
maybe 1950s crinoline look, where it mixes elements
of the past into one dress.
Gives the wedding an eternal and romantic feel.
The wedding day becomes special because she's wearing a dress
very different from her everyday clothes,
and she feels like a princess.
And I think that's something that a lot of brides
are actually aiming for.
We also know that she's been
strongly influenced by the bridal industry,
which encourages the wearing of the traditional dress
because it costs money.
Now, besides the wedding dress, the wedding veil is another part
of wedding attire that did not become traditional
until the Victorian era.
So the image of a bride covered within a veil made her look
illusive and unapproachable,
underneath the see-through fabric.
And it seemed to reinforce the best female virtues of the era,
which were purity, piety, and submissiveness.
So this is as it's becoming--
We're talking second quarter of the 19th century,
those were the values most highly prized in women.
Now, during the 19th century, the veil might be the only
special attire many brides wore.
And you can see it in these two weddings here,
from Mazomanie on the left and Lodi on the right,
where they're wearing dark dresses but they do have a
full-length veil showing that they are brides in this picture
and it's not just a typical couple picture.
Now, they almost always have orange blossoms on their veils,
and both these brides do.
She's got orange blossoms here,
and you can see her orange blossoms
and they come down the front.
And both of the men have orange blossom corsages.
This is a wedding wreath made of wax orange blossoms,
and then the veil above it
also has orange blossoms made into it.
Now, why orange blossoms?
Well, we think it's because--
Well we know it's because, to them
in this generation, it symbolized--
Orange blossoms, fruit and flower at the same time.
So they symbolized fertility.
The idea is if you draped yourself in orange blossoms,
you would be a fertile bride and have children.
However, we do know that several ministers railed in popular
literature against the obvious sexuality that this implied.
But it does not seem to be heated.
And it's not until the 1920s, 1930s,
where orange blossoms are your grandmother's way of getting
married and are no longer modern.
And I just want to follow up with one last ritual
that I think is fairly important to this time period,
and that is wedding presents.
So the change in women's roles was a major catalyst
in bringing about the traditional wedding,
but the flood of mass manufactured goods available
and the emerging consumer-oriented society of the 19th century
also had a tremendous effect on wedding rituals.
After the Civil War,
requirements for a comfortable standard of living rose,
and this usually meant owning more stuff
than previous generations.
And the wedding became the time when most couples
acquired the bulk of their possessions,
either as part of the trousseau or as wedding presents.
And here you're seeing a domestic sewing machine ad
on the left, showing a couple, a wedding couple looking at their
presents, and you can see one of the prized gifts
is a domestic sewing machine.
On the right is a painting called "Wedding Gifts,"
where grandma, mom, and the bride, I believe it goes,
this is grandma, mom, and the bride,
are looking over the wedding gifts.
And before, we know that before 1830s,
a wedding gift was usually land or money from the parents.
You didn't get lots of fancy wedding gifts
from friends and family.
But by the 1870s, not only were close friends and family giving
presents, but also distant relatives, acquaintances,
coworkers, everyone was expected to give a wedding gift.
And the nature of gifts changed
from being kind of necessities, like land and money,
to unessential luxuries directed towards the bride.
And that's what you're seeing in the painting.
So gift-givers assume that the parents would take care of the
necessities and it would be offensive and tactless
to offer them as presents.
So, many upper and middle class brides cataloged and displayed
their gifts in the parlor.
And putting pressure on givers not to give anything cheap
or unimpressive because people would come to your house
and look over who gave what.
And, as you can see, there's a lot of silver involved here.
And some of the-- Actually a lot of the gifts
were geared to entertaining.
So you might get things like asparagus serving sets
or crumb trays or celery servers or oyster forks, fish knives,
and often fancy flatware, china, glass and linens.
During the 20th century, that changed to small appliances,
like blenders, toasters, and mixers, for example.
So this is actually a stereopticon slide
showing a silver anniversary wedding.
I thought it was a wedding gift at first,
but then I did some research on the family and on this picture
and found out it was their silver anniversary wedding
where they got more stuff.
So it helped bolster up what they had.
Now, we do know that the China Hall store in Rochester,
Minnesota, created the first bridal registry in 1901.
And the idea, of course, was to prevent the duplication
of gifts, but it also encouraged wedding guests
to patronize that particular store.
However, it's not until the 1930s that the bridal registry
truly became popular.
And by 1984, 65% of couples we know registered for gifts.
Now, other industries besides department stores,
like Prange's, which I realize is no longer around,
but this is a gift registry
that I actually needed to print out in 1991.
So that was useful. And I put it on exhibit.
Other industries, not necessarily bridal industries,
got into the wedding gift advertising,
realizing that the wedding guest
is a prime candidate for purchases.
So here we're seeing three ads.
One for the wedding gift that keeps on giving.
It turns out to be an iron.
The one in the middle is ringed with thoughts of you,
showing a wedding ring surrounding a toaster.
And then the one on the right says,
"gifts with a long and happy future,"
and its toasters and irons that they're pushing there.
So wedding gift-giving in the late Victorian era
reinforced a predominant Victorian belief
that material goods provided happiness.
So having more stuff made you more happy.
And we know this continued into the 20th century
because here's a Saturday Evening Post cover of a couple
dreaming of their future.
I think they're a newly engaged couple dreaming of their future.
And I hope you can see in the picture that they are dreaming
of stereos and radio console sets, TVs, refrigerators,
washers and dryers, pianos, two cars, a house, a pool,
a couple kids, well actually three kids, one, two, and three,
with a nanny, and plus all the appliances up front.
So, like I said, this belief of stuff
continued into the 20th century.
But what I want to conclude by saying is that American rituals
of romance had their roots in the early Victorian era,
a time when society changed dramatically.
These rituals helped couples, but especially women,
adjust to a new set of expectations.
We now live in a period of history in which many rituals
have become obsolete and disappeared
or altered form completely,
and courtship rituals have been susceptible
to fluctuations in American society.
And each generation has modified them to fit
their values and needs.
On the other hand, traditional weddings survived almost
untouched, partly because the bridal and related wedding
industries have fossilized and sold the traditions
of the 19th century to succeeding generations.
More importantly, however, the traditional wedding's formality,
pageantry, and opulence gives this rite of passage an aura
of importance and uniqueness.
Weddings connect us to our ancestors and provide
opportunities for widely scattered families to come together.
The traditional wedding will probably continue to survive
as long as it satisfies these basic needs.
I'm finishing with an advertisement from the
Saturday Evening Post from Ponderosa Pine Woodwork,
who also found a way to sell their products
to newly-married couples.
You can see it says, "Just Married" on the car,
and it says, "They'll live happily ever after
"with Ponderosa Pine Woodwork."
[laughter] So, thank you very much.
[applause]