We should add that ushers and Groomsmen are unknown at an English wedding.
"Manners and Social Usages"
Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
The "bridal pair" stand together, of course, to receive, and as many of the original party of the Groomsmen and bridesmaids as can be got together should be induced to form a part of the group.
"Manners and Social Usages"
Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
The immediate wedding-party are soon seated-twenty of them-at the great table in the dining-room, while all the guests are scattered about at little quartette affairs around the broad halls and conservatory, and the orchestra plays sweet strains from their perch on the enclosed piazza, and busy waiters fly to and fro, and soon the champagne-corks are popping and the rooms are ringing with mirth and merriment, and Ray and Marion, seated side by side at the head of the broad table, are bombarded with toasts and congratulations, and the laughter and applause grow incessant as the bridesmaids and Groomsmen exchange the poetic "mottos" in the favors they find at their places, and no bridesmaid seems quite able to properly affix the little gold sabre that is nestling in the folds of her napkin: it takes a soldier's practised hand to fasten them in those dainty India silks; and every groomsman swears that no one but a woman can ever properly adjust the daisy, which, as a scarf-pin, is his reward for the evening's services; and some inspired fellow-citizen gracefully proposes the health of the hostess, and an eminent statesman present ponderously does likewise for the bride, although it was the fixed determination that there should be no formal speech-making; but Mr. Sanford happily comes to the rescue in a few remarks of unaccustomed humor, in which he sets the room in a roar by expressing his satisfaction at having married off one encumbrance, his modified rapture in the reflection that there were still two or three in the way of daughters and nieces whom he felt bound to similarly dispose of, his comfort in the sight of half a dozen such likely young officers as those present, and his hope that they wouldn't "fool away their time."
"Marion's Faith."
Charles King
