The bride was elegantly dressed, the two bridesmaids were duly inferior, her father gave her away, her mother stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated, her aunt tried to cry, and the service was impressively read by Dr Grant.
~ Mansfield Park
Although Jane wrote about love and marriage extensively in her novels, she rarely goes into detail when it comes to their wedding ceremonies.
Jane as a person would have seen many weddings in her lifetime. As a young girl she often stood in as a witness to the weddings her father conducted at St Nicholas in Steventon. She had three brothers, and probably watched them go to great lengths to find a wife.
Jane’s sister Cassandra was engaged to Tom Fowle, a pupil of her father’s who also lived at the rectory, and watched as their love grew over the years. It is thought that Jane accepted a proposal from an unsuitable match to avoid being left on her own. However, after Tom died, she could stay with Cassandra and her need to marry became less important.
Jane’s brothers were lucky in love, and Jane saw how happy Charles was in his marriage to Fanny, a girl he met in Bermuda. The Navy gave him status and paid his way, along with Frank who was also in the Navy. He married Mary, and Jane lived with them in Southampton until her move to Chawton. Edward was wealthy and happy with Elizabeth in Kent, and James married Mary, a local girl from Steventon. As a clergyman, he was probably the most cash strapped, however his marriage to Mary bought him a new carriage and a pack of hounds.
Jane wrote about people finding love and happiness, and it was important to her that in the eyes of the church, people would marry for love and live happy ever after.
There is however a reality that goes alongside. In this painting by Gillroy, you can see two people wooing each other before they are married. He holds the music book whilst she plays the harp. Everything is in twos, as cupid watches over them shooting his arrow into their hearts.
In his next painting that follows titled, ‘Matrimonial Harmonics’, he shows the couple after the wedding where she is trying to play the piano amongst the noise of the house, a baby crying whilst her husband tries to read the newspaper.
It showed the comic side of marriage at that time that is probably still true today.
The elements of a regency wedding
Jane’s niece Caroline wrote about weddings when she was a girl, ‘Weddings were then usually very quiet. The old fashion of festivity and publicity had quite gone by, and was universally condemned as showing the bad taste of all former generations…. This was the order of the day.’
So a regency wedding was a quiet, simple affair, and were conducted with the service in the Book of Common Prayer, with ‘Do you take this woman..’. Engagements were usually short, and did not involve an engagement ring. Papers were drawn up, money changed hands, and a mother would take her daughter to buy a trousseau, a box of clothes and possessions to take to her married home. Family joined honeymoons and hopefully the couple are in love or at least like one another.
How to have your own regency wedding?
1. find multiple brides
It was common for multiple couples to marry at the same time, looking at each other as they said their wedding vows. They took place in the mornings, usually after the service and rarely on Sundays as that service was long.
Edward was the first of Jane’s brothers to marry. He was adopted by wealthy cousins in Kent, and Elizabeth Bridges was a local beauty. She married Edward at a joint wedding with her sister on 31 December 1791.
2. make it legal
Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 came into force on 25 March 1754, an Act designed for ‘the better preventing of clandestine Marriages’. It was introduced to stem the rise of forced marriages and disputes, and the licence given to the lady was proof of her status.
If getting married in church, the ceremony had to be performed by a clergyman, between the hours of 8am to 12 noon, with two witnesses and the couple signing the Marriage Register to make it legal. Mr Austen was meticulous in his duties, and recorded the weddings in his parish in the Steventon Register. (Of course he sometimes asked his daughter Jane to do this, and she noted her own weddings in the front of the resider on the specimen pages!).
Another way to marry was by an ordinary licence from the local bishop or a special license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. It took longer and was very costly, though a matter of money and status, as Mrs Bennet exclaims of Mr Darcy’s fortune in Pride and Prejudice.
Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! Tis as good as a Lord! And a special licence! You must and shall be married by a special licence!
3. money and love
In Pride and Prejudice, one of the first things we learn about Mr Darcy is his immense fortune, ‘£10,000 a year!’ He was a millionaire by today’s standards, which explains why Mrs Bennet is so excited that Elizabeth may marry such a rich man.
Jane enjoyed Fanny Burney’s novels, especially Cecilia which influenced her own writing. The novel features a heroine who must marry to inherit her fortune – similar to the plot lines in Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Jane wrote of inheritance, money and marriage, and homelessness, and knew herself that as a clergyman’s daughter she had no dowry to speak of, and money mattered.
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
She turned down a proposal to be mistress of Manydown, as she did not love Harris. In her novel Northanger Abbey she wrote around the same time, Catherine Moreland says, ‘To marry for money is the wickedest thing in existence.’
Cassandra and her fiancee Tom had to wait to marry, as he had yet to inherit a living. He went out to the West Indies to better his situation, which is where he died, and Cassandra remained single the rest of her life.
It was a male dominated world, and when a woman married, she passed from the control of her father to her husband. It had been known that some men put their name on the cover of a published novel that their wife had written, another good reason for Jane not to marry.
4. timing is everything
In the regency period, weddings were often held around Christmas time when families had more time to gather, as the holiday was much longer than it is today. Edward married on 27 December 1791 at a joint wedding with her sister. Jane’s other brother Henry married their cousin Eliza in London by special license on 31 December 1797, New Years Eve.
Mr Austen gave a generous £40 to Henry’s regiment for a feast to celebrate his marriage (the same amount he gave to Jane for her annual allowance). He was particularly fond of Eliza, and kept a portrait of her that she had given him as a gift. A local from the village said that, ‘Mr. Austen has put a coronet on his carriage … because of his son’s being married to a French countess.’
5. FIND A frock
Wearing a specially made traditional white wedding gown with veil did not come into fashion until the Victorian era. Most brides married in their best Sunday dress, with a bonnet or turban adorning their heads. White or another pastel was typically chosen for the gown if it was new, and the wealthy, may get a special dress made for the wedding day.
While Regency weddings were low key, an exception occurred when the Prince Regent’s daughter, Princess Charlotte, married in 1816. The public were desperate for details, and her elaborate wedding dress was made of silver threads. It was heartbreaking to hear that the following year Charlotte died in childbirth.
Mrs Austen dressed in her red riding coat for her wedding that she later cut up to make coats for her little boys!
6. THE READING of the banns
The Harwicke Marriage Act made marriages more public and a calling of the Banns of Matrimony became a requirement. For three Sundays prior to the wedding the congregation were asked if they had a reason to speak against the marriage.
I publish the Banns of marriage between [Groom’s Name] of [his local parish] and [Bride’s Name] of [her local parish]. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is the first [second, third] time of asking.
As many people could not read, it was the only way people knew about an upcoming wedding. It comes from the marriage liturgy section of the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549 to guide the clergy in their religious duties.
7. rings
Engagement rings were not the diamond solitaires you see today. Sometimes a ring might be given as a token of affection in a long engagement, though it was more likely to be a portrait or a lock of hair, as Marianne gave to Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility.
Edward in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility wears a ring made from his fiancee’s hair as a token of their engagement.
It was usual for women to wear wedding rings, and less an obligation for men. In Appleton’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Artin (1869), it stated that ‘Although a ring is absolutely necessary in a Church of England marriage, it may be of any metal, and of any size.’
8. eat caKE
Jane’s niece Caroline (James’s daughter) gave a wonderful description of her sister Anna’s wedding to family friend Ben Lefroy on 8 November 1814.
The breakfast was such as best breakfasts then were. Some variety of bread, hot rolls, buttered toast, tongue, ham and eggs. The addition of chocolate at one end of the table and the wedding-cake in the middle marked the speciality of the day…soon after the breakfast the bride and bridegroom departed. They had a long day’s journey before them to Hendon…. In the evening the servants had cake and wine.
In Jane’s novel Emma, there is lots of talk about the wedding cake, and whether it was good for you or not – even an apothecary is consulted by Mr Woodhouse!
9. get noticed
The newspaper announcement was, perhaps, the most socially important part of the wedding. Jane once wrote in a letter, ‘The latter writes me word that Miss Blackford is married, but I have never seen it in the papers, and one may as well be single if the wedding is not to be in print.’
In Pride and Prejudice, the simple announcement of Wickham and Lydia’s wedding worries Mrs Bennet. ‘I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It was in the Times and the Courier, I know; though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, ‘Lately, George Wickham Esq., to Miss Lydia Bennet,’ without there being a syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything.’
10. have a rather large honeymoon (or not)
Literally, the ‘honeymoon’ originally referred to the first month of marriage (a moon) when couples were new to each other. It was not until the early 1800s did people take a post-wedding holiday.
Often, the bride’s sister or closest female friend accompanied the couple, as Julia did Maria in Mansfield Park. When Mr and Mrs Knight visited the Austen’s at Steventon, they took a shine to Edward and took him with them on their honeymoon. As England was at war with France, it made sense to stay local and most couples simply took a short trip to visit friends and family.
In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Collins and Charlotte simply went home.
The wedding took place; the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from the church door, and every body had as much to say or to hear on the subject as usual.
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REGENCY WEDDINGS AND MARRIAGE QUIZ
- Which sisters are married on the same day?
- Who marries a lady for her £50,000 fortune?
- Which of Jane’s characters get married on her birthday, 16 December?
- Who was given £500 to spend on wedding clothes?
- Whose wedding is lacking in white satin and lace veils?
- Who has two ‘duly inferior’ bridesmaids at her wedding?
Click here for the QUIZ ANSWERS
TAGS: Jane Austen weddings, Regency weddings, Hardwicke Marriage Act, Pride and Prejudice marriage, Marriage Register, marriage laws, why Jane Austen never married, church, honeymoons, eloping in the Regency era, Regency wedding, marriages, Bride, Vows.
