- Regency Dresses Historical
- Regency Wedding Dresses
- Regency Wedding Dress
- Regency Style Wedding Dresses Uk
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The White Wedding Dress
Today the traditional bride wears white but how was it in Regency times? Did women wear white back then and if they didn't what did they wear? When was the white wedding dress introduced? Are there any Regency wedding gowns surviving till today? | ||
Although dresses became more elaborate later in the period white continued to be a favored color throughout the era. To the right is a French evening dress from 1804-05 d of fine white cotton embroidered in satin stitch and knots that could well have doubled as a wedding gown. A white chemise, and for the modest, an underdress as well, would be worn under this semi transparent 'mull.' Queen Victoria's InfluenceQueen Victoria is often credited with inventing the fashion for white wedding dresses. Although it's true that she herself wore a white dress she was by no means the first one. Anne of Brittany is supposed to have married Louis XII of France in a white dress. That was way back in 1499 e, more than three centuries before Victoria. Rather, Victoria started the fashion for white as the only acceptable color for fashionable wedding dresses. Before her the bride of royal birth often wore silver or other costly materials. | ||
When Princess Caroline of Brunswick married The Prince of Wales on April 8, 1795, she was dressed in an extremely rich and heavy dress of silver tissue and lace, topped by a robe of ermine-lined velvet f. Her daughter Princess Charlotte, whom married Prince Leopold in 1816, had more expensive dresses than she knew what to do with. For her wedding she chose to wear a silver lamé dress over white silk, trimmed with silver lace g. | ||
The wedding of George [IV] Prince of Wales and Princess Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel on April 8, 1795 5 | Princess Charlotte of Wales and Prince Leopold of Cobourg returning from the Altar, after the Marriage Ceremony on May 2 1816 6 |
'White Is The Most Fitting Hue'How common the white wedding dress was is hard to say today as records are scanty, but we have some reasons to suspect that the white wedding gown was perhaps more prevalent than we may think. The Godey’s Lady’s Book h of 1849, for instance, claims that: It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one.' | ||
'Pamela is married' from the novel 'Pamela' by Richardson (1740) 7 | More than a century before Victoria's wedding made white The color of wedding gowns, in 1729 to be exact, Hogarth painted 'The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox i, showing the bride in a heavy white satin gown trimmed with lace and on her head a short lace weil pinned back. And, although it's a fictional wedding, painter Joseph Highmore, when he ca. 1743 illustrated the marriage scene in Samuel Richardson's 'Pamela,' j depicted the bride in a white silk gown, white long gloves, white fishue tucked in (Pamela is ever modest!) and her head covered with a white lace cap. Moving forward to the Regency era, there are certainly other historical instances of the bride wearing white. When Jerome Bonaparte (Napoleon's brother) wed the fashionable American beauty Elizabeth Patterson many years later, on Christmas Eve 1803, the bride married in a dress of thin white muslin and lace k. And when Napoleon himself remarried in 1810, his bride, Marie Louise of Austria, wore a typical white muslin Regency column dress for her official church wedding l. (She and Napoleon were wed by proxy before she left Austria.) Her dress was of white satin, heavily embroidered with leaves and Napoleonic bees in silver and gold, as befitted an Empress, but the fabric of her gown and petticoat was so thin that one guest wrote that 'all the clothes worn by the bride might have been put in my pocket.' m | |
Another bride wearing white at her wedding was Jane Austen's niece Anna who married Benjamin Lefroy on November 8, 1814. Her sister Caroline describes her finery as 'a dress of fine white muslin, and over it a soft silk shawl, white shot with primrose [yellow], with embossed white-satin flowers, and very handsome fringe, and on her head a small cap to match, trimmed with lace.' n No veil for Anna! | ||
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte 9 |
Regency Dresses Historical
Next: Early Bridal Prints
Illustration: Notes on the text: |
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After Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 the Georgian couple in England and Wales had three ways of getting married: by banns, by common licence or by special licence. (There was actually a fourth option – to get themselves over the border to Scotland and be married under Scottish law, but I’m leaving the elopements out of this post!)
Banns are intended to give anyone an opportunity to declare reasons why a marriage may not go ahead and the requirement for banns goes back to 1215. They must be called on three Sundays before the wedding date in the church of the parish where the couple intend to marry. Since 1823 it has been a requirement to call them in the parish or parishes where the bride and groom are resident if that is not the parish where the wedding will take place.
Banns are fine if you have no objection to the whole parish knowing your business, but you might want more privacy or you might wish to marry in a hurry. The alternative was a common licence, which cost more than banns and this was the option chosen by many people with pretensions to gentility and by anyone who could afford it and who wanted a hasty marriage – for whatever reason.
A common licence could be issued by archbishops, bishops, some archdeacons and ministers in parishes which were ‘peculiars’ (eg St Paul’s cathedral). The 1753 Act required a marriage by licence to take place in a parish where one of the spouses had been resident for at least four weeks, but this was often ignored.
Regency Wedding Dresses
Regency Wedding Dress
To obtain a licence someone, usually the bridegroom, had to apply at the registry for the appropriate jurisdiction and submit an allegation which was a statement, under oath, that there were no impediments to the marriage. Usually the document included the names, ages, occupations and marital status (single or widowed) of the parties and, if one of them was a minor, it had to name the parent or guardian giving their consent. Sometimes a money bond was provided to back up the allegation.
Allegations, bonds and the licences themselves survive quite rarely. The licence was given to the couple to hand to the clergyman who would perform the marriage and, presumably, they often did not give them back, so I was delighted to find the one shown below.
It has a tax stamp in the top left corner for ten shillings (on top of the cost of the licence) and the Archbishop’s seal is suspended in a paper envelope at the bottom. It reads:
Charles, by Divine Providence, Archbishop of CANTERBURY, Primate of all ENGLAND and Metropolitan, by the Authority of Parliament lawfully authorized for the Purposes within written: To our well-beloved in CHRIST,
Curtis Graves of the Parish of Saint Andrew Holborn in the County of Middlesex, Bachelor and Mary Dunn of the same parish a Widow
GRACE and HEALTH. WHEREAS it is alledged [sic] that ye have resolved to proceed to the Solemnization of true and lawful Matrimony and that you greatly desire to cause and obtain that the same may be solemnized in the Face of the Church; We being willing that these your Desires may be the more speedily obtain a due Effect, and to the End thereof, that this Marriage may be publicly and lawfully solemnized in the Parish Church of Saint Andrew Holborn, London by the RECTOR, VICAR or CURATE thereof, without the Publication or Proclamation of the Banns of Matrimony, and at any Time in the Year, provided there shall appear no lawful Impediment in this Case by Reason of any Pre-contract, Consanguinity, Affinity, or any other Cause whatsoever, nor any Suit, Controversy, or Complaint be moved, or now depending before any Judge Ecclesiastical or Civil, for or by Reason thereof; and likewise, That the Celebration of this Marriage be had and done publicly in the aforesaid Church between the Hours of Eight and Twelve in the Forenoon. We for lawful Causes, graciously grant this our Licence and Faculty, as well as to you the Parties contracting as to the RECTOR, VICAR or CURATE of the aforesaid Parish who is designed to solemnize the Marriage between you, in the Manner and Form above specified, according to the Rites of the Book of Common Prayer, set forth for that Purpose by the Authority of Parliament. Provided always, that if in this Case there shall hereafter appear any Fraud suggested to us, or Truth suppressed at the Time of obtaining this Licence, then this Licence to be void and of no Effect in Law, as if the same had never been granted; and in that Case we inhibit all Ministers, if any Thing of the Premises shall come to their Knowledge, that they do not proceed to the Celebration of the said Marriage without first consulting us, or our Commissary of the Faculties. GIVEN under the Seal of our OFFICE OF FACULTIES, this Eighth Day of May in the Year of our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five and in the First Year of our Translation.
[Signed] Chas. Moore Regr.
The back has been signed by Chas. Pryce, St Andrews. May 10th 1805 – the day Curtis and Mary were married.
The Archbishop was Charles Manners-Sutton who was Archbishop 1805-28. Charles Moore Esq. who signed it was one of the Principal Registrers [sic] of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and the Revd. Charles Pryce who performed the ceremony was elevated to a Prebendal Chair at Hereford Cathedral in 1814.
Bridal Dress Ackermann’s Repository April 1818
There was also the possibility of marriage with a Special Licence which was very rare. These could only be obtained from the Archbishop of Canterbury and allowed a marriage to take place anywhere, not just within a place of worship licenced for marriages. A handful were granted each year, usually to members of the upper reaches of the aristocracy.
Ralph Rylance in his Epicure’s Almanac (1815) describes the scene in the Horn Tavern, Godliman Street. This lay between St Paul’s Cathedral and Doctor’s Commons, which was where the lawyers practicing civil and ecclesiastical law were based and was the easiest place to get a licence for those living in London.
‘…the fond expectant bridegroom sips his soup or savoury jelly, waiting for his licence, which is to be obtained from the Prerogative Court. This soup, jelly, and licence, form the prelude to his occupancy of his (perhaps) equally important bride. Good easy man! He little thinks that the licence aforesaid is to rob him of his liberty for and during the remainder of his, the aforesaid bride-groom’s life.’
Regency Style Wedding Dresses Uk
Parisian Evening Bridal Dress La Belle Assemblee October 1819