Till death do they part
Weddings through the ages
BY Lynn Cunningham
Circa A .D. 28 A marriage feast at Cana in Galilee is the occasion of Jesus’s first miracle: turning six large jugs of water into wine. Given the cost of contemporary weddings (see 2008), it’s unfortunate this feat hasn’t been duplicated since.
1703 Mary, Lady Chudleigh waxes both poetic and pragmatic in “To the Ladies”: “Wife and Servant are the same / But only differ in the Name: / For when that fatal Knot is ty’d, / Which nothing, nothing can divide: / When she the word obey has said, / and Man by Law supreme has made, / Then all that’s kind is laid aside, / And nothing left but State and Pride….”
1840 Queen Victoria’s lasting legacy is more than cool fireworks in late May. For her marriage to Prince Albert she chooses a white satin gown, thus establishing the tradition, or tyranny, of the white wedding. In 1849, Godey’s Lady’s Book, the Vogue of its time, decrees somewhat ahistorically, “Custom has decided, from the earliest ages, that white is the most fitting hue, whatever may be the material. It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one.”
1964 An amendment to the Civil Code accords married women in Quebec such rights as no longer needing their husband’s written consent for surgery, being able to dispose of their own property and other provisions that alter their status from essentially children who can drive. The Globe and Mail’s first substantive article on the subject appears—where else?—in the women’s section.
1996 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act is passed in the United States, with the aim of removing needy families from government supports. Since many of those affected are women, one explicit goal is to marry them off. A decade later, researchers find that there’s been very little impact on marriage rates, but that the legislation has severely limited women’s ability to improve their education. They point out that a woman with a college degree is 5.5 times more likely to marry than one with less than a high-school diploma.
2001 The first legally recognized same-sex marriages are performed in Amsterdam, joining three male couples and one female one. A National Reviewcolumnist responds by suggesting the country’s “decline in the institution of marriage” and an increase in the “illegitimacy” rate are a result of the change.
2008 Weddingbells magazine surveys its readers and finds that they anticipate paying $17,300 for their Big Day. This is one dream that probably won’t come true: the average wedding now costs between $20,000 and $30,000, and more in larger centres.
