Weddings: Romance and ritual

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0:45the spectacle the drama the fashion romance all come together in a single event with the power to move and delight there is something about weddings for many of us that is irresistible

1:06I'm Izzy Lawrence, and on this forum from the BBC World Service, we'll be lifting the veil on the history of weddings, looking into some of the ways people have celebrated what can be one of the most important occasions in their lives. And throughout the programme, we'll hear from those of you who got in touch to tell us about your most memorable wedding experiences.

1:35A few years ago, I was invited to an English-Spanish wedding. It was probably one of the most beautiful weddings I attended. I have never, ever or since been to a wedding where such generous portions of cake were served.

1:58The dancing party lasted up to 4 o 'clock in the morning. That's when about 10 waiters came with some bocadillos, sandwiches, for everyone to eat and have more energy to dance up to nine o 'clock in the morning. This is really the best wedding I've ever been to. Thanks to Fidela in France and Anna Grace in Uganda for sharing their thoughts on the BBC World Service Facebook page. Marie, of the hundreds of weddings you must have planned in connection with your job, which one sticks in your mind? My favourite wedding, the one that does stick out in my mind a lot, is a wedding where the bride was unable to be walked down the aisle by her father because her father had sustained a back injury.

2:48And then on the day itself, unbeknown to anybody else, he had been going to physiotherapy for a year and was able to, as a surprise, stand out of his wheelchair and walk her down the aisle. There was not a dry eye in the house. It was absolutely beautiful and just reminded us of how wonderful weddings can be, what a miracle they can be. So you're a historian, Vicky. Is there a wedding in history that you'd have liked to have been to? Well, I would say that, of course, I've read about famous people's weddings, but I've also learned about the weddings of ordinary people. and to me the weddings of ordinary people stand out the most and in particular I would have liked to have attended an ordinary wedding that my parents had in 1962.

3:32I've seen photographs of it, I've heard stories about it, it sounded like the weddings that I wrote about in this sort of heyday of the wedding industry in the 1950s and 60s. I would have loved to have attended that. Shania, like Marie, you must have been to a huge number of weddings as a photographer but which was the most memorable for you? Sure. But before I answer that, let me tell you, an Indian wedding isn't an event. It's a three-day marathon disguised as a love story, right? So the wedding that really stayed with me, they designed each event around the five elements of nature. So the mehendi, when you put henna on the hand, we call it mehendi, was on a breezy rooftop.

4:16And the sangeet, when people danced, they called it fire. And the wedding itself was under a neem tree. At one point, I really thought that forget decorators, even nature was on their guest list. That's Shania Arora, one half of Knitin' Arora photography, which she founded with her husband. and Shania is also the host of Wed FM India, a podcast all about weddings. Also on the discussion panel is Vicky Howard, visiting fellow in the Department of History at the University of Essex in the UK and an expert in the history of retail. She's the author of Brides Inc, American Weddings and the Business of Tradition.

5:00And joining Vicky in the studio is Marie Haverley, deputy head of the business school and senior lecturer in event management at the University of Winchester in the UK. Marie used her 15 years working in the wedding industry to write The Practical Guide to Wedding Planning. Now marriage is of course something that's been marked for thousands of years in many many cultures around the world for a variety of different reasons. That's separate from the idea of a wedding. Marie, how much do we know about the earliest wedding ceremonies and what they involved? Well, of course, as we think of weddings today, they would have been known as more promises and unions between men and women.

5:47And we can date them right back to the first recording that we know of, which was 2350 BC in Mesopotamia. But These obviously prehistoric unions would have been certainly based around pair bonding. They would be a socially recognised union, so very good for community, good for procreation, certainly good for investment. So a lot of these unions, we would have been seeing them as much more focused on survival and cooperation, family alliances. So fast forward a few thousand years, Vicky, to the Byzantine Empire. We're seeing evidence of rituals that we might recognise today in some wedding ceremonies.

6:26The exchange of rings is what I'm thinking of. Is that right? Yes and no. I would say that you have these rituals that are associated with weddings like ring exchange that come into play, disappear. It's very hard to generalise. I guess that's my answer. But you can look specifically at liturgy, look at the written record and see what was required. It doesn't necessarily mean that's what people were doing. And you do find evidence in liturgy that there are ring exchanges, like two rings used in the 11th century, some specifications of gold for the bride, silver for the groom, and that the exchange of rings might mark a couple's entry into marriage, that the exchange becomes sort of the binding ritual that legalizes that union.

7:15But that's not to say that this is something widespread, engaged in by everybody everywhere, or that it's been passed down unchanged. All of these different rituals are very specific to time and place. I'm guessing that it's difficult to establish what the traditional elements of a wedding were in that part of the world because of their lack of sources. Rituals either weren't written down or have been lost. But when it comes to India, Shania, we're on stronger ground here. There are written records of how Hindu weddings were conducted and the rituals that couples should adhere to going back thousands of years.

7:53Oh, absolutely. Honestly speaking, Hindu weddings are long. Honestly, people joke you need snacks, a break and maybe even subtitles sometimes. But Hindu weddings are beautiful because they are not just about celebration. They are about history. That's still alive today, thankfully. But there are times when couples would want to question, why are we doing what we are doing right now? But at the core, it comes down to three sacred rituals. The first one, of course, is when the father places his daughter's hand into the grooms. And the other one, when the couple walk around the sacred fire and they take seven rounds, they promise each other that they will be taking care of each other, more like vows, right?

8:43and making their bond eternal. And then they take, like I told you about the seven steps together, each one with a vow. And here is what always moves me, that those vows come straight from the Rig Veda. This is one of the most important Veda in Hindu culture, written over 3 ,000 years ago. So think about that. couples today across the world are still speaking the same words with ancestors did thousands of years back and you know for me that's the magic you're not just witnessing a wedding you're witnessing a living tradition that's carried love across millennia like literally and it makes me feel really, really happy, though I have seen grooms putting the vermilion on the bride and brides are also doing the same thing.

9:39They're saying that if I'm taking care of you, I will take care of you too. So people are definitely making certain changes as per today's culture, but the core value remains the same. So there's clearly a strong historical link between weddings and the Hindu religion there, as Shania was saying. But when it comes to other faiths, Marie, take Christianity, for example. Was the Christian church always involved in weddings, or was it more of a private affair? Yeah, we don't really see Christianity or the church becoming involved until about the 12th to 16th century. So many, many years before that, it was certainly a civil affair.

10:19It was an agreement and a promise between two families or two communities. we didn't see the church really claim authority until sort of later towards the 15th 16th century and it wasn't until 1753 that the first law was written to state that marriages had to happen in a church for it to be official in the UK so that's when we certainly see Christianity taking a stronghold in weddings historically we then don't see any real changes until the 1836 marriage act which is when civil marriages were allowed. So allowing a slight differentiation between religious weddings and civil weddings. And by this time in Europe, so let's talk 15th, 16th century, is love now part of weddings and marriage, Marie, where couples choose each other as opposed to the family?

11:06Or is it still very much this transactional family-led marriage that's going on? At that time, it still would be a transaction. it would be for the benefit of the bride or the groom, mainly the groom. The bride was seen as the prize, which is very much why she's often given away and presented. So she would be the valuable quantity within this agreement. So if you were a family that had wealth or you had prosperity or you had land, then your daughter was certainly seen as a valuable piece of property to hand over and to align with your neighbours or with a specific religious or political alliance.

11:45It wasn't really until 18th, 19th century, sort of the time of enlightenment, where men and women were certainly starting to choose love before they were having that chosen for them. So actually, for most of human history, the idea of a love marriage formalised or celebrated in a wedding is but a tiny part. And in India today, Shania, by and large, it's the family who still choose partners. or is that changing? Oh, it's definitely changing. And I'm so glad because of that, the divorce rate and everything is lessening. And the reason why I say that, imagine when my parents got married, they haven't even seen each other.

12:24They just, I mean, parents acted like facilitators and they were the one who decided, okay, my mom will get married to my dad. And they didn't even know how they look in reality. So that's insane. And now I feel really happy because when people ask me, are arranged marriages still happening in India? The answer is definitely yes, absolutely. 90 % of marriages in India are still arranged in some form. But here is the important part. They have changed massively. It's not like the old days where the couple just met at the manda for the first time. Today, families act like facilitators for sure, but they introduce, they support, they check compatibility, but the couple has to agree.

13:11I sometimes explain it like this. You can meet through a family introduction or even a matrimonial app, but the final swipe right only works if both the couple and the families are happy. It's a balance of personal choice and a collective approval. And here is the magic of India. You will see this mix of modern romance and timeless rituals. A bride might be taking selfies with her friends while right next to her, her grandmother is whispering prayers. So you will see both the worlds coming together. Now people are going for live-in relationship just to check the compatibility. So yes, definitely India is changing in many ways.

13:51And finally, like I said, it definitely has lowered down the divorce rate worldwide compared to purely love marriages. Interesting. Let's hear now from one of our listeners, Sontani in Zambia, and her memories of her own wedding in 2017. It was very intimate, attended by very few people, only close friends and family. The laughter, the congratulatory messages, the gifts were all from the heart. And the people that came know my husband and myself. So it was something that was very special to me. It made me to be very excited. I was free to showcase my individualism and my husband's individualism, the things that we like, the music that we enjoyed.

14:46And they would not be questioning to say, oh, why is she not wearing a white dress? Why is she not wearing a tiara? Why is she not wearing white shoes and a beautiful black and white tuxedo for my husband? But they understood what we wanted because they were very close to us. This is what made me to be very emotional and very happy. That was Sontini in Zambia. Sontini mentioned there was no pressure from her friends or family at a wedding in Zambia to wear a white wedding dress. Vicky, tell us how this idea originated, because some people may be surprised to learn that the white bridal gown isn't the time-honoured choice we might think it is.

15:30The formal white wedding gown that's worn once, that's purchased or made just for one occasion and never worn again is absolutely an invented tradition and has a specific origin in the United States that you can trace. And that ideal of the white once-worn wedding gown shaped other cultures elsewhere. It's sort of a Western ideal. It's tied to fashion, so it has ebbed and flow to some degree, but the iconic ideal of the white wedding gown as being something that all brides must wear came into place about the late 19th century in the United States, but was more widespread by the early 20th century and became sort of an absolute must-do by the 1950s.

16:14I want to know, though, is there a specific event or a moment that sparked the idea of the white wedding dress being, I'm thinking mainly of Queen Victoria, that made it popular? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes, well, Queen Victoria's wedding to Prince Albert in 1840 was widely acclaimed and people bought engravings that commemorated it. It was something that introduced new levels of luxury and sort of an ideal of the white wedding gown, which is what she wore to her wedding. And the fashion plates of Godey's Ladies Book and other women's magazines sort of picked up on that. However, even though it's sort of acclaimed as the origin of the white wedding gown, it did popularize it, but many ordinary people continue to wear their best gown.

16:59And that might not have been white. That would have been, you know, something that they would have had that they could wear on other occasions. So it was something that was an elite ideal and spread to the elites and then to the upper middle class. But it's not until the early 20th century do you see you have mass production techniques. You have mail order. You have department stores selling cheaper versions of wedding gowns. It becomes something accessible to ordinary people. And why white? Why is the color white so important? Well, some people think it's associated with purity and true womanhood.

17:31It is a fabric that sets your gown off from ordinary wear because it's difficult to care for, to keep clean. As an historian, I don't like to generalize about these types of things. But what's really important is in what counts is that the people writing about weddings, people popularizing it over time have talked about this connection. And that is what maybe has stuck. Many people today are choosing outfits for their weddings that are a world away from the so-called traditional white dress popular in many societies. Here is listener Suzanne in the United States. Paul and I wanted to get married and we originally were going to get married at one of the little chapels that are in Vegas, one of the many.

18:17So it was 1030 at night and very hot as it was in August. We were dressed in t-shirts, shorts and sandals. We went to the Justice of the Peace office to purchase our marriage license. And we decided, well, why not? Why wait to the next day? Let's just get married right now. and we have been very happily married since August 1997. That was Suzanne in the United States. Forum listener Jude in Canada told us about the time friends of hers got married on jet skis on the lake in Idaho. They wore wetsuits and donned the veil and tuxedo jacket while the guests were dressed as if they were going to the beach.

19:05And Tustin got in touch to tell us about her wedding where she and her husband-to-be invited all the women to wear their wedding dresses. I'm guessing this was for female guests who were already married. We had 14 brides at the party, she says, and she loved the idea of letting the women have another chance to wear a dress they'd only worn once. Vicky, it does seem very wasteful in this area where we're encouraged to be more responsible in how we use and reuse things. So how much can a wedding dress cost? Wedding dresses, the wedding ring, the engagement ring, all of these things are major expenditures, not to mention, you know, the hotel, the honeymoon, the venue for the reception.

19:48Weddings as a whole, I think I read something like in 2018, in the United States, the average cost of a wedding was$44 ,000. So the wedding gown can be, you know, a major part of that expenditure. And, you know, it's not just the wedding gown, it would be also the bridesmaids dresses. Usually that's something that's not worn again. I know I had a closet full of bridesmaids dresses that I was never able to wear again. So there's a lot of consumer traditions involved with the wedding that are invented at different points in time that businesses introduced or elaborated upon older customs to create that consumer ideal of the white wedding.

20:25Shania, what kind of sums are we talking for the brides dressed in Indian weddings? Oh my goodness. Indian bridal couture is honestly one of the biggest industries in the country. OK, it's not just fashion. It's an entire economy. Designers here don't just dress brides. They create dreams. And I say that because they are designing for mother. They are designing it for the bride. They're designing for the entire family. And everybody wants to look like a bride. And think about this, a single bridal lehenga, a long, heavily flared skirt that can be embroidered or something of that sort that is usually worn by the brides can cost anywhere between 10 to 15 lakh rupees that's around 11 000 to 16 500 euros right and sometimes even more but here is the thing indian weddings aren't just about one outfit right i told you it's a marathon for three to four days.

21:30And bride usually needs outfit for multiple ceremonies. That's five or six couture look, each one different. And the spending doesn't stop at clothes. Jewelry is a massive part of bridal couture because we always connect a woman with the goddess, right? India is the second largest consumer of gold in the world. And a huge chunk of that is bought for wedding. It's not an unusual, you know, for bridal jewelry alone to cost more than the lehenga itself. But we are talking about the pieces which has been passing down from generations, but also newly commissioned for the bride as well. So pressure today is real.

22:17Some families even take loans to host what people call a big fat Indian wedding. Imagine starting your married life with debt just because a thousand guests expected a thousand buffets. But what's inspiring though is how younger couples are changing the trend. They are choosing smaller, more meaningful weddings where it's less about showing off and more about celebrating love. And when that happens, the food definitely tastes better, the photos look better, and the memories last longer. And that's the beauty of India. We carry tradition, but we are not afraid to reshape it for the times.

23:20The music we heard there will be familiar to many married couples as Mendelssohn's Wedding March, which is taken from a suite of incidental music he wrote for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's often played at church weddings in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America, after one of Queen Victoria's children requested it as the music to accompany her down the aisle. So I want to look at how influential royal weddings have been in setting the tone. Marie you watched the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011 I was lucky enough to be on a very similar panel to this in the morning of the wedding where we were discussing emotions and how people would be feeling at that time so how Kate might be feeling how her family might be feeling and we were very much focused on yes she's about to marry into a very influential royal family but she's also a young woman marrying the love of her life.

24:17And it was wonderful to be part of and then wonderful to witness such a spectacle. We do know how to do royal weddings here in the UK. Listener Hiram in Liberia mentions Prince William's wedding as one of the most memorable. Vicky, you talked earlier about Queen Victoria wearing a white dress at her wedding and how that's become the standard in many, many countries around the world. Do royal weddings set trends? Well, I think that royal weddings join a whole host of events and famous people in the media shaping today's wedding culture. But historically, royal weddings did influence fashions, but so did things like depictions of weddings in films by Hollywood royalty in the United States, like Elizabeth Taylor's wedding in Father of the Bride introduced sort of a sweetheart neckline into the wedding gowns for a short time.

25:09A 1939 blockbuster film, Gone with the Wind, had a small wedding scene in it. The wedding gowns that were in these Hollywood movies would be popularized by department stores that would have tie-ins with the Hollywood film. Listener Mabusio in Kenya describes the marriage of Prince, now King, Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 as the wedding of the century. Diana looked like an angel in a 20-foot train, he says. Her beauty burned my eyes while I watched the wedding on TV from my sitting room. I read somewhere that 750 million people worldwide saw that wedding on television. Shania, how influential have royal weddings been in India?

25:56Oh my goodness. Yes, royal weddings in India were always about status, palaces, elephants, fireworks, and that's still in our DNA. But it doesn't, of course, come as a royal wedding, but it comes as Indian big fat wedding. I'm not sure whether you've heard about the Ambani wedding, which has happened in India. The Ambani's are one of the most powerful and wealthy families. The younger son of Mukesh Ambani has got married. And you won't believe the amount of money that they have spent on the wedding where Rihanna, Justin Bieber, our prime minister, everybody was a part of it. I have seen so much media, so many people just talking about that wedding for a good three months.

26:52In India, weddings can cost millions, but the new generation is proving that love doesn't need alone, it needs meaning. Well, a billionaire's wedding watched by millions around the world, it's going to require a huge amount of preparation by professionals experienced in event planning. that's something that's also been creeping in to the lower key wedding if I can call it that why did you go into wedding planning then Marie? The simple answer from my heart would be who wouldn't want to spend every weekend at the most romantic and happiest event of our lives it's it's a wonderful happy place. Oh I wouldn't.

27:32It sounds exhausting I mean it's all very well it's happy but it sounds absolutely and no weekends to sort of like have to yourself it sounds like a very hard career. You must have witnessed some, you know, epic wedding moments in your career. Has there been anyone's wedding that you've planned and you said to yourself, I don't think this is going to turn out well, i.e. like the relationship, not the actual, you know, wedding itself, which I'm sure because you organised would be beautiful. Oh, yes, yes. See, that would be telling. That would be telling. Tell us. No, no. No one's listening, I swear.

28:05What I can tell you to be a professional here. What I can tell you is one of my first degrees was in around psychology and I discovered early on what the term bridezilla meant in that I don't believe the term is a correct term. I don't believe that women turn into these monsters when they become stressed. I think we all deal with stress in a different way and certainly I've had my fair share of meeting that stress and that stress being shown in many different ways. Why is it so stressful to get married? I think it's the pressure. I think, you know, as women, we are not naturally very self-confident.

28:42We have insecurities around what we look like, being viewed, being judged. We judge each other, unfortunately, still as women. So I think there's the pressure of looking your best, being the right weight, the right size, the right shape, doing everything perfectly. Pressure of everybody wanting you to do something specific for them, you know, perhaps grandparents or parents giving you pressure, you must do this, you must do that. And then, yeah, the expense of it and trying to fit that into a normal daily life, planning a wedding takes a lot of time. And the whole thing is quite difficult, I think.