The Marriage Institution

83:4.1The wed­ding cer­e­mony grew out of the fact that mar­riage was orig­i­nally a com­mu­nity af­fair, not just the cul­mi­na­tion of a de­ci­sion of two in­di­vid­u­als. Mat­ing was of group con­cern as well as a per­sonal func­tion.

83:4.2Magic, rit­ual, and cer­e­mony sur­rounded the en­tire life of the an­cients, and mar­riage was no ex­cep­tion. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, as mar­riage be­came more se­ri­ously re­garded, the wed­ding cer­e­mony be­came in­creas­ingly pre­ten­tious. Early mar­riage was a fac­tor in prop­erty in­ter­ests, even as it is to­day, and there­fore re­quired a le­gal cer­e­mony, while the so­cial sta­tus of sub­se­quent chil­dren de­manded the widest pos­si­ble pub­lic­ity. Prim­i­tive man had no rec­ords; there­fore must the mar­riage cer­e­mony be wit­nessed by many per­sons.

83:4.3At first the wed­ding cer­e­mony was more on the or­der of a be­trothal and con­sisted only in pub­lic no­ti­fi­ca­tion of in­ten­tion of liv­ing to­gether; later it con­sisted in for­mal eat­ing to­gether. Among some tribes the par­ents sim­ply took their daugh­ter to the hus­band; in other cases the only cer­e­mony was the for­mal ex­change of pres­ents, af­ter which the bride’s fa­ther would pre­sent her to the groom. Among many Lev­an­tine peo­ples it was the cus­tom to dis­pense with all for­mal­ity, mar­riage be­ing con­sum­mated by sex re­la­tions. The red man was the first to de­velop the more elab­o­rate cel­e­bra­tion of wed­dings.

83:4.4Child­less­ness was greatly dreaded, and since bar­ren­ness was at­tributed to spirit machi­na­tions, ef­forts to in­sure fe­cun­dity also led to the as­so­ci­a­tion of mar­riage with cer­tain mag­i­cal or re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als. And in this ef­fort to in­sure a happy and fer­tile mar­riage, many charms were em­ployed; even the as­trologers were con­sulted to as­cer­tain the birth stars of the con­tract­ing par­ties. At one time the hu­man sac­ri­fice was a reg­u­lar fea­ture of all wed­dings among well-to-do peo­ple.

83:4.5Lucky days were sought out, Thurs­day be­ing most fa­vor­ably re­garded, and wed­dings cel­e­brated at the full of the moon were thought to be ex­cep­tion­ally for­tu­nate. It was the cus­tom of many Near East­ern peo­ples to throw grain upon the new­ly­weds; this was a mag­i­cal rite which was sup­posed to in­sure fe­cun­dity. Cer­tain Ori­en­tal peo­ples used rice for this pur­pose.

83:4.6Fire and wa­ter were al­ways con­sid­ered the best means of re­sist­ing ghosts and evil spir­its; hence al­tar fires and lighted can­dles, as well as the bap­tismal sprin­kling of holy wa­ter, were usu­ally in ev­i­dence at wed­dings. For a long time it was cus­tom­ary to set a false wed­ding day and then sud­denly post­pone the event so as to put the ghosts and spir­its off the track.

83:4.7The teas­ing of new­ly­weds and the pranks played upon hon­ey­moon­ers are all relics of those far-dis­tant days when it was thought best to ap­pear mis­er­able and ill at ease in the sight of the spir­its so as to avoid arous­ing their envy. The wear­ing of the bridal veil is a relic of the times when it was con­sid­ered nec­es­sary to dis­guise the bride so that ghosts might not rec­og­nize her and also to hide her beauty from the gaze of the oth­er­wise jeal­ous and en­vi­ous spir­its. The bride’s feet must never touch the ground just prior to the cer­e­mony. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury it is still the cus­tom un­der the Chris­tian mores to stretch car­pets from the car­riage land­ing to the church al­tar.

83:4.8One of the most an­cient forms of the wed­ding cer­e­mony was to have a priest bless the wed­ding bed to in­sure the fer­til­ity of the union; this was done long be­fore any for­mal wed­ding rit­ual was es­tab­lished. Dur­ing this pe­riod in the evo­lu­tion of the mar­riage mores the wed­ding guests were ex­pected to file through the bed­cham­ber at night, thus con­sti­tut­ing le­gal wit­ness to the con­sum­ma­tion of mar­riage.

83:4.9The luck el­e­ment, that in spite of all pre­mar­i­tal tests cer­tain mar­riages turned out bad, led prim­i­tive man to seek in­sur­ance pro­tec­tion against mar­riage fail­ure; led him to go in quest of priests and magic. And this move­ment cul­mi­nated di­rectly in mod­ern church wed­dings. But for a long time mar­riage was gen­er­ally rec­og­nized as con­sist­ing in the de­ci­sions of the con­tract­ing par­ents—later of the pair—while for the last five hun­dred years church and state have as­sumed ju­ris­dic­tion and now pre­sume to make pro­nounce­ments of mar­riage.