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Tag Archives: Regency Weddings

Why write another post about Regency weddings? If you search this site, you’ll find a whole collection of fun & fact-filled wedding-related posts written by various Riskies over the years. But the book I’m currently working on is set against the background of a Regency wedding, and I’m reviewing everything I know about such events. I’m looking at how we know what we know as much as the “what we know” both in this post and in my research. As a former journalist, I always remember to “consider the source” when collecting information.

Pride & Prejudice Wedding

As romance writers, we authors can find it a bit disappointing to hear that Regency weddings were not as big and special as they tend to be today. It’s true that many of our revered traditions developed during Victoria’s reign or later. One of the oft-cited sources for documenting the “low-key” Regency approach is a remembrance by Jane Austen’s niece Caroline (b. 1805), describing her half-sister Anna’s marriage to Benjamin Lefroy on November 8, 1814.

Note the following from her recollection: “The season of the year, the unfrequented road to the church, the grey light within… no stove to give warmth, no flowers to give colour and brightness, no friends, high or low, to offer their good wishes, and so to claim some interest in the great event of the day – all these circumstances and deficiencies must, I think, have given a gloomy air to the wedding…” She adds, “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.” (my added emphasis)

Genre painting by Henry G. Schlesinger

I haven’t found the date when Caroline wrote this reminiscence, but I note that she was all of nine years old at the time of the actual wedding. I find her insistence that “this was the order of the day” a bit suspect. How would she know this? She was not then at an age to be attending any other weddings. Also, it was November. I’m sure hothouse flowers were not in the budget!

She continues: “No one was in the church but ourselves (she had listed six men and four females, all relatives in the two families), and no one was asked to the breakfast, to which we sat down as soon as we got back…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.”

Isn’t it possible that, looking back in her later life, she might have been tempted to justify the extreme austerity of this family wedding by claiming it was the norm? Both Anna and Ben Lefroy were the offspring of clerics, and the groom was a cleric himself, as yet without a living. An expensive wedding was doubtless not an option for the family (and probably not considered suitable for clerics, anyway). A longer version of the same quote begins, “My sister’s wedding was certainly in the extreme of quietness: yet not so much as to be in any way censured or remarked upon….”  Caroline sounds defensive to me, as if she feared people would judge her family against the more elaborate Victorian wedding customs that became the fashion later in the century when she was looking back.

The Village Wedding by Fildes

Just eight years before Anna Austen’s minimalist wedding, we have another oft-quoted wedding example from the opposite end of the continuum that I propose existed as much then as now. The Annual Register for 1806 includes this description of a very elaborate wedding clearly designed to show off the extreme wealth of the bride:

“Sept. 9.  This day was married at Slinsford Church, Dorset, Viscount Marsham, son of Earl Romney, to Miss Pitt, only daughter and heiress of William Morton Pitt, esq., with a fortune of 60,000 pounds and an estate of 12,000 pounds per annum, independent of the estates of her father.” (There follows a list of the witnesses, seven of whom were prominent enough to be named, in addition to the bride & groom and family members, plus one “officiating” attendant each for bride and groom.)

The astronomical expense lavished on this wedding would be almost unimaginable if you didn’t take into account that the ultra-wealthy aristocrats were the rock star celebs of their day. “In the early part of the morning the whole of the unmarried female branches of the neighbouring tenantry and villages attended at Kingston-house, the seat of W.M. Pitt, esq., each female attired in an elegant white muslin dress, provided for them, as a present on the occasion, by Miss Pitt. After refreshments, about 40 couples proceeded, two and two, before the procession to the church, strewing the way (before the happy couple), in the ancient style, with flowers of every description. After the ceremony they returned in the same order, attended by nearly 300 spectators, where a dinner, consisting of English hospitality, was provided on the occasion in booths on the lawn; and the festive eve concluded with a ball on the green, in which the nobility present shared in the mirth. At an early hour in the evening, the happy couple and suit set off in post chaises to pass the honey-moon at the lady’s own seat, Enchcome-house, Dorset.”

Health to the Bride, genre painting by Sadler

It makes me a little bit crazy when I hear people now try to characterize the behavior of people in the past as being all one particular way. I’m not saying fashions and trends didn’t exist, but individual people and families still followed their own traditions and were limited (or not) by their incomes and situations, just as we are today.

Knowing this makes me comfortable designing the wedding in my new book the way that fits my characters and their specific situations, within a good grounding in what we do know about Regency weddings. Since they’re not using a Special License, the wedding has to be in the morning, and at church. This was a matter of law, not choice, as was the presence of an officiating clergyman and a clerk to record the proceedings. There will be no white dress, veil, or assemblage of bridesmaids. Her dress could be white, but since in this period it could be any color, I think it’s more fun to go there. And while fashion prints start to show veils in the late Regency (see an interesting post here), my 1814 wedding is too early for that. A wedding “breakfast” will follow, as was customary. It makes sense that you need to feed your guests! As my groom’s family is wealthy, the breakfast will be more elaborate than the one Caroline Austen described, but nothing so grand as Miss Pitt’s! And as my bride has almost no family near her, her relatives will travel a distance to attend.

If you married, how big or small was your wedding? Or weddings you’ve attended? How big or small is your family? I’ve been to intimate weddings with less than 30 people and one huge wedding with 500 guests where I didn’t even know the bride or groom.

It’s just one more very sad ripple effect of the Coronavirus pandemic that weddings since March of 2020, if happening at all, have to be small, intimate celebrations, and preferably held out-of-doors. Circumstances require adaptation. That was as true back in the Regency as it is now, so I think assuming Regency weddings were only done in one particular way is a false view of the times. Sorry, Caroline Austen!

Wedding Couple, 1826

October will be a busy month for me and my family. My daughter is getting married! So naturally, all I’ve been thinking about lately are weddings. You might think I would convince my daughter to have a Regency wedding, but – alas! – she’s always had a mind of her own. It’s too bad. A Regency wedding would have been lovely!

The Regency was a time of great drama and beauty, a time when lords and ladies were expected to marry well, but also a time when the concept of marrying for love had taken hold. From Jane Austen to Georgette Heyer to today’s Regency Romance authors, that concept of marriage for love is what we celebrate. At least my daughter’s wedding will be all about celebrating love!

Now, I was married a brazillion years ago, long before I started writing or reading Regency Romance, but after I started writing Regencies I realized I had actually had a Regency Wedding!

Here I am with my bridesmaids. Notice that our dresses are all empire-waisted. Notice the leg-o-mutton sleeves on my dress and the puffed sleeves on the bridesmaids dresses.

Now compare these dresses to two Regency Fashion Prints from the fashion magazines of 1815.

See the similarities?

I had a Regency Wedding!

Many Regency lords and ladies married in St. George’s, the church on Hanover Square in Mayfair, London.

My daughter didn’t want a church wedding, though. She wanted to be married outside in a garden. Too bad, because she might have been able to be married at the Prince Regent’s summer home, the Brighton Pavilion in Brighton Hove.

In a room like this:

Much too fussy for her, though.

But she did want a bit more fuss than those Regency couples who married in a hurry, eloping to Gretna Green, just over the border in Scotland. Here I am standing at the historic anvil. Regency couples were married “over the anvil” in Gretna Green.
No, this isn’t another wedding photo. It is me with the tour guide at Gretna Green when I visited in 2005. I’m holding a copy of The Wagering Widow which began with a Gretna Green wedding.

Here are some quick facts about Regency Weddings:

  1. Regency brides did wear white, but they didn’t have to. In the Regency, white gowns were popular for many occasions. Other colors like pale pink and blue were also worn at weddings. The older the bride, the darker the color. Wedding dresses were worn after the wedding, too. By the time Queen Victoria became a bride and wore white, the white wedding dress was well on its way to becoming a tradition.
  2. Weddings could take place after reading of the Banns, a license, or a special license. Banns must be read for three consecutive Sundays in the parishes of both the prospective bride and groom. A license, purchased from the bishop of the diocese, did away with the banns but the couple still had to be married in the parish church. A special license, purchased from the Archbishop of Canterbury, allowed the couple to be married in a location other than a church and without banns. Licenses were never blank; different names could not be substituted.
  3. Scottish weddings went by different rules. In Scotland couples could be married by declaring themselves married in front of witnesses, by making a promise to marry followed by intercourse, or by living together and calling themselves married.
  4. Weddings could not be performed by proxy. Both the bride and groom had to be present.
  5. Ship captains could not perform marriages. Couples could be married aboard ship, but only by clergy. (How many times have you read that plot?)
  6. Brides had wedding rings; grooms did not. The bride could give the groom a ring as a wedding gift, but it was not part of the ceremony and didn’t symbolize he was married.

Lastly, here is a photo of my husband and me on our wedding day. Aren’t we cute?

I actually am very pleased at the choices my daughter has made and I cannot wait to share the happy day with her!

Has anyone attended a Regency-themed wedding? What was the last wedding you attended like?

How was everyone’s Thanksgiving?? Did you eat wonderful food and spend time with friends and relatives? Did you do any Black Friday shopping? (I did all my weekend shopping online…). Did you read any good books??? I have been writing, reading (The Night Circus, which is terrific), and getting out Christmas decorations. But today I’m taking time out to show you my new covers!! I am so excited about them.

They’re the first two books in my new Laurel McKee series for Grand Central, the Victorian-set “The Scandalous St. Claires,” about a notorious underworld family of gamesters, actors, and rakes, and their centuries-old feud with a ducal family (begun by a romance gone bad, and now ended by new romances):



They will be out in June and December of next year! You can pre-order One Naughty Night here

I also wanted to say Happy Anniversary to William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, who were (possibly) married on November 28 in 1582. At the time Anne was 26 and Will was 18 (below the age of consent, scandal!), and Anne was pregnant (not uncommon–it’s estimated that 1/3 of Tudor era brides were pregnant before the wedding). On Nov. 28, two husbandmen of Stratford called Sandells and Richardson were sureties for 40 pounds in the consistory court of Worcester so the marriage of “William Shagspeare and Anne Hathwey” could go forward with only one publication of the banns. They were married at St. Andrew’s Church at Temple Grafton, about 5 miles from Stratford (possibly–see this link for more info…). The couple moved in with Shakespeare’s family and 6 months later their daughter Susanna was born. No details are known about the clothes or music, it was probably very quiet.

More wedding info can be found here

And some Elizabethan wedding customs here

What historical wedding would you like to attend? What are some wedding customs you especially enjoy (or think we could so without)???

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Or would you just like to dream about one?

Then you probably would like to know where to go to get a Regency wedding dress. In the Regency, many ladies simply married in their best gown, which may have been white, or may not have been. Weddings were not grand like the one we’re anticipating between Prince William and his Kate. They were private affairs, with only those closest to the family. Today weddings can be as grand as William and Kate’s or as humble as the bride, groom, and a witness.
But today most brides want a dress. A WHITE one…and it could be a Regency one.
First stop might be The Jane Austen Centre Gift Shop. They offer a lovely, authentically cut, Regency dress suitable for a wedding.
Or you could ask Jessamyn of Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion to make you this dress.
Or ask Foxglovegowns to custom-make this one.
Or you can buy this one from an Etsy Shop
Or you can borrow mine!!
Can you tell I’m using every spare moment to write Leo’s Story, my Diamonds of Welbourne Manor-connected book?
Can you also tell that one of my favorite TV shows is Say Yes To The Dress?
Which gown do you pick?
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Today I’m on the road, traveling back home from a family wedding this weekend. So, because I’m thinking about weddings, I’ve adapted a blog I wrote a couple of years ago for Harlequin Romance authors who had a blog promoting their series, The Wedding Planners. I was their guest blogger, talking about Regency Weddings.

I was married a brazillion years ago, long before I started writing or reading Regency romance. It wasn’t too long ago I realized I actually had a Regency Wedding!

Here I am with my bridesmaids. Notice that our dresses are all empire-waisted. Notice the leg-o-mutton sleeves on my dress and the puffed sleeves on the bridesmaids dresses.

Now compare these dresses to two Regency Fashion Prints from the fashion magazines of 1815.

See the similarities?

I had a Regency Wedding!

And you can have a Regency Wedding, too. There are many sites on the internet offering custom made Regency wedding dresses. Here are two of them:

Regency Reproductions

Fashions in Time

Or if you are handy you could make your Regency gown:

McCall’s Pattern M6030

In fact, if you so desire, you can have a Regency wedding in one of the historic sites in the UK.

This is St. George’s, the church on Havover Square in Mayfair, London, where many Regency lords and ladies held their weddings. You can, too.

You can also have your wedding in the Prince Regent’s summer home, the Brighton Pavilion in Brighton Hove.

In a room like this:

If that is too fussy for you, or if you must marry in a hurry, like many couples in Regency Romances, you can elope to Gretna Green over the border in Scotland. Here I am standing at the historic anvil. Regency couples were married “over the anvil” in Gretna Green.
No, this isn’t another wedding photo. It is me with the tour guide at Gretna Green when I visited in 2005. I’m holding a copy of The Wagering Widow which began with a Gretna Green wedding.

How about it? Have I convinced you to have a Regency Wedding?

Ask me any questions you like about Regency Weddings, but I won’t be home until after 7 pm. I’ll let you know then how this wedding was. What do you think? Do you think the bride will have worn: a) Leg o’ mutton sleeves b) empire waist dress c) stapless dress?

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