We have been prevailed upon, once again, to permit a little carefully controlled nostalgia into the blog, despite our fears as to the popularity of life in St Maeve’s among our presumably elderly readers. Our caveat is as always- those were the days and they’re not coming back ! They can’t !
The Sacrament of Matrimony is far from dead. Weddings have in fact been canonised, or the equivalent in a secular society, by being given what might be called a culture slot on television. Actually up there with sharks, Stephen Fry, Hitler, Egyptian mummies and the dissection of bizarrely murdered corpses, on programmes like CSI
In St Maeve’s, in the Forties and Fifties, a marriage was a marriage, but a wedding was also a wedding . A choice of time other than ten o’clock Mass was considered to be Bohemian. Nuptial Mass, with Papal Blessing, preordered from the Vatican in a cardboard cylinder, with exotic postage stamps from the Vatican City itself, was statutory.
It was the custom as a new baby was going to its christening to give a “christening piece”, a bread and butter sandwich with a coin , as a gift to the first child met on the way to the Church. As dead nowadays is the custom of scattering money to children as the bridal car left the Church , both gone thanks to potential litigation on the grounds of food poisoning on the one hand, and possible injury under the wheels of the car on the other.
Wedding photographs are now taken at the reception, and in a world full of conspiracy theories which are not always just theories , it is possible to believe that the amount of time it takes to produce the wedding photographs is the result of an arrangement between the photographer and the bar staff . The impact of this delay on guests who have been unwise enough to approach the wedding Mass on an empty stomach can be considerable, even if it is an effective anaesthetic for some of the speeches.
The thousands of cabinet photographs still in existence also show that white weddings are comparatively modern. Good suits and “costumes” were the order of the day for bridegroom and bride, and for most people. The photographs were limited in scope to the bride and groom, and probably also the best man and best maid, sometimes in a photographer’s studio, and that at the double. Little attention was paid to the possibility that low-grade members of the groom or bride’s party might be offended by the omission of their poses, however artistically arranged in these photos, or to the rather improbable possibility of the photos being reprinted in “Vogue”.
Next stop was the wedding breakfast, in Glasgow in places like the Ca’doro, for the well fixed, or Miss Buick’s, or for most others the many branches of the City Bakeries. At that time, it was still possible for the Best Man to make the statutory thanks to the Best Maid without embarrassing the entire company and the catering staff. A problem still to be solved after the meal itself , for the Best Man, and one which still exists, was what was to be done with the wedding telegrams. What does one do with wedding telegrams? It is easy to read out “Best wishes from Bert and Maisie- and remember yon day in Palma?”. It is difficult , as a Best Man, to bring the emotional impact of this telegram home to a company, when it is painfully obvious to everyone that neither the bride nor bridegroom can remember who Bert and Maisie were, or what happened yon day in Palma, and exactly how they are supposed to respond to this. . Once the painful ritual of telegrams is over, nowadays, the dancing begins. But before weddings were held in functions suites, the guests simply went to the cinema, family parties to follow.
Earlier wedding breakfasts,before and at the turn of the 20th century, were held at home, the guests appearing after a twelve hour day at work whenever they could. This meant that weddings could last for several days. It is a family tradition that on one occasion, a four day wedding celebration disintegrated only after the groom, who had been present obviously throughout the celebrations, and whose perceptions had become increasingly blurred took exception to the best man being described as such, and what are euphemistically described as ructions ensued. The lengthy wedding breakfast survived until the Fifties, and especially among the Italian community, and I recall my father and mother appearing several times, on several days, at the same Italian wedding .
Wartime shortages affected our lives , sometimes permanently, and without our realising how much , the impact being forgotten as time goes on. One of these was the paper shortage, which restricted the size of all newspapers. The local “Scottish Catholic Observer” suffered from this, and from it went the rather pleasant prewar way in which it described weddings. For instance, :
” A wedding of great interest took place in St
Patrick’s Anderston on Thursday morning when Joseph, eldest
son of Mr and Mrs James Kelly, of 17 McIntyre Street,
Anderston, was joined in holy matrimony to Alice Moira,
eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs John McKerrell, 39
McIntyre Street. The ceremony was performed with
Nuptial Mass by Rev. Father Lynch.
The bride, who was a well-known member of
the choir, looked charming in a pretty dress of duck egg
blue georgette, embroidered with powder blue silk, with
flounced skirts and puffed sleeves, with straw hat to
match. In place of the usual bouquet, the bride carried a
missal. The bridesmaid, Miss Annie McKerrell,M.A.,sister
of the bride, wore a beautiful dress of floral ninon, having
a coatee with puffed sleeves and a silver lace bodice and a
large picture hat of blue. She also carried a missal.”

As well as this, there followed the entire guest list, and therefore a wonderful souvenir of the occasion. In an era in which the Sacrament of Matrimony is under attack from some remarkably bizarre angles, perhaps the Catholic press might consider reviving this treatment of one of the Church’s most important Sacraments.