Talking of being married in white, should you really have done it ( if you did)?

As a sixteen year old I worked in a pharmacy and all condoms were wrapped up in brown paper and the price written on them. 3/6d, 3/9d, and 5 shillings.

chocolatepudding: So sad to hear this about your DD .
What a cruel MIL.

Like many on here I married in white in the mid 60s and was technically a virgin until my wedding night. However DH and I had shared much intimacy i.e. everything short of full intercourse -it was fun and was a form of "try before you buy". Most of my -(close enough to discuss these issues friends)- did the same. Those were the days when you could only get The Pill once you were married and already had at least one child and men had to go to another town to buy condoms rather than risk gossip in the local pharmacy.

chocolatepudding

I wore a white wedding dress at our church wedding and gave birth 4 months later to our DD1. Two days later MIL shouted at us in the maternity ward a) the disgrace we had brought to the family name, b) what were the neighbours going to say?, c) what were the ladies at the WI going to say? She shouted at us and reduced me to floods of tears.
As a small extra story our DD died suddenly age 7 months. MIL only concern was to put a piece of family jewellery in the coffin. She never apologised for her outburst at the maternity ward and now I just hate her for the way she treated us (she died 20 years ago)

That's so sad chocolatepudding, so sorry for your heartbreaking loss Your mil sounded like absolute horror.

Dickens I am at one with you. My post probably sounded flippant, but I take marriage very seriously, it is a regret of my life that I'd had a first marriage that ended in divorce. My parents weren't at all happy about that particularly as I was raised a catholic and divorce in the eyes of the church, certainly at one time was kind of level pegging with murder as to the gravity of it. I have to balance those regrets against the fact that my second marriage has been one of the best things in my life. I commend those who have only had one stab at it and found their soul mate and love of their life the first time around. I always remember Paul McCartney's words when he lost his beloved Linda, something along these lines "we only had 25 years, some have many more years together but it's about the quality of our shared life and those 25 years were wonderful, I would trade them for 50 years or mediocrity, or worse" something along those lines but not verbatim. So yes to quote you "I believe marriage is a serious commitment and rather a private affair apart from being a rite of passage" absolutely! With that in mind, the extremes some go to as to what they expect from the day and the lead up appear completely over the top and superfluous as to the essence of taking a serious vow. Some, not all, stag and hens come across as very tawdry affairs particularly when there are those who use it as an excuse to have one last fling, it debases what they are about to enter into and poses the question as to why they are getting married in the first place. It doesn't matter how much money is thrown at the day itself that won't mean a thing if the relationship can be so undermined by the preamble and the focus on a gamut of minutiae of expensive window dressing which in the great scheme of things matters not one iota in the shared path a good relationship follows supporting each other through, the highs and lows. Again I agree with you about the father giving his daughter away which is symbolic of ownership once, which I appreciate isn't taken as such now and if a daughter is close to her father then she would want that I guess, but speaking for myself, having a certain amount of ambivalence with mine, I certainly never felt his to give away anyway. So yes marriage at its best is really something to celebrate and it's worst, well hell with the wrong person and I don't blame anyone for getting out of such a relationship and starting again..

I wore a white wedding dress at our church wedding and gave birth 4 months later to our DD1. Two days later MIL shouted at us in the maternity ward a) the disgrace we had brought to the family name, b) what were the neighbours going to say?, c) what were the ladies at the WI going to say? She shouted at us and reduced me to floods of tears.
As a small extra story our DD died suddenly age 7 months. MIL only concern was to put a piece of family jewellery in the coffin. She never apologised for her outburst at the maternity ward and now I just hate her for the way she treated us (she died 20 years ago)

TerriBull

With one 3 year old and another on the way, there didn't seem a lot of point really! The white symbolism supposedly representing purity was outmoded b****cks even then. Do men wear white, no! Because as we know they're almost expected to have been around the block a few times.

👏👏👏

Do men wear white, no! Because as we know they're almost expected to have been around the block a few times.

The inherent double-standards for men and women is repugnant in this day and age.

If sex or promiscuity before marriage is wrong, then it's also wrong for men. Men still continue to denigrate women who've also "been round the block" whilst still traversing it themselves.

I don't expect many will agree - and I do admit to having opinions that go against the traditional grain; I also detest the stag and hen culture, too.

I believe marriage is a serious commitment, and a rather private affair, apart from it being a rite of passage. Getting "bladdered" the night or days before your wedding - with the almost-compulsory in some instances - stripper (female or male) is tawdry and (IMO) skews the whole event into a pantomime.

... organising these stag and hen events is a lucrative business though.

Perhaps brides should marry in whatever colour dress or suit makes them feel most happy?

The days of a father giving away his 'property' - his daughter - to be kept by another man, who she used to promise to obey are long gone. Thank goodness.

Christmas Day wasn,t a holiday inScotlanduntilthe late 1950,s I think.I know it was a normal working day for my dad and for Aunts and uncles when I was wee.I was born early 1954

I read somewhere that Queen Victoria made white wedding dresses popular after she wore white for her wedding.

My in-laws were married on Christmas Day.
I don’t know the year but my H would have been 88 now and he was the third youngest of a large family so a very long time ago.

paddyann54

White wedding dresses didn’t really appear until Victorian times or at least that was what I was taught until then poorer girls wore their Sunday best and the better off wore more elaborate versions of their normal clothes.Withthe white dresses came the veil and a lot of what we see as tradition.
Even during Victorian days the “lower classes” tended to marry on the rare days off they had.Most of my ancestors married on New Year’s Day as it was a rare holiday in Scotland .I don’t know what the equivalent in England was as I suspect Christmas would have been a no go day because of religious rules.
Maybe someone here would know.

More than one set of my ancestors married on Christmas Day.
That would be in England.

I thought it was an odd choice of day but perhaps it was easier to have that as a day off.

Unfortunately I only have one photograph of a Victorian wedding of a cousin of my father, which I found on the internet. Her Grandmother, my Great-Grandmother, was all in black as she was a widow.

Thank you.

MissAdventure

Does nobody know where the white idea came from, then?

Queen Victoria set the trend for a white wedding dress (as with Christmas trees and Albert’s German traditions)
Before that smart normal dress prevailed.

I worked in the wedding industry for nearly 50 years

White wedding dresses didn’t really appear until Victorian times or at least that was what I was taught until then poorer girls wore their Sunday best and the better off wore more elaborate versions of their normal clothes.Withthe white dresses came the veil and a lot of what we see as tradition.
Even during Victorian days the “lower classes” tended to marry on the rare days off they had.Most of my ancestors married on New Year’s Day as it was a rare holiday in Scotland .I don’t know what the equivalent in England was as I suspect Christmas would have been a no go day because of religious rules.
Maybe someone here would know.

Does nobody know where the white idea came from, then?

It really doesnt matter in the grand scheme does it? …..

Married more than once, all registry office and never wore white or pregnant, in fact my first child was born 9 years after my first wedding.

Sago

So basically the OP is asking who walked down the aisle a virgin.

I find this a little bizarre.

So do I. For goodness sake this is the 21st century. Wearing white and being “given away” by your father should be confined to history.

Very tasteful, Babs*
Girls go crazy for a sharp dressed man!

I wore a cream and coffee/brown two piece, was a registry office wedding and cream and brown were on trend. My DH had shirt collars that looked big enough to take flight and flairs, cream and brown again. Oh and for some reason I wore a large cream floppy hat. Thankfully we were young enough to carry it off.
And seeing as we had been living together in his student flat I was certainly not a virgin.

I wore white, I was three months pregnant at the time. I was only 18. I am now divorced, but in a relationship.

I wore white but a velvet hooded dress no veil as really didn’t like them. I wasn’t pregnant as first child born 3 years later ( day before the anniversary . I was not a virgin but had only slept with my husband . Divorced now he was a S.—t husband wish Id slept with loads more!

So, where does the virgin in white come from, if it isn't biblical?