Wedding Ceremonies doubtless arose by degrees and in different ways; and often when the mode of contracting a marriage altered, the earlier mode survived as a ceremony. Thus, for example, the system of capture was transformed into a mere symbol after purchase was introduced as the legal form of contracting a marriage, and again the custom of purchase has survived as a ceremony after it has ceased to be a reality. Marriage being a matter of some importance naturally begot ceremonial—symbolical of sexual intercourse, or of living together, or of the wife's subjection to the husband. And naturally religious rites would be added to give sanction—prayers, sacrifices to appease the gods. There was no religious contract among the ancient Hebrews; and there is no trace of priestly consecration in the Scriptures or the Talmud. Under Christianity a religious character came early to be given to the rite, although the early church, like the Buddhists, regarded marriage as little more than a concession to human weakness. The notion that marriage is a sacrament grew naturally out of St Paul's phrase, 'This is a great mystery' (Eph. v. 32), for the Vulgate translation renders μυστήριον by 'sacramentum.'
One of the most wide-spread rites of marriage is that of the man and woman eating out of the one dish, as we see it, for example, all over the Malay Peninsula, and elsewhere. Among the Roman three forms of marriage prayers, sacrifices, and auspices were essential only in the confarreatio, not in the coemptio and usus. In the first of these, the old patrician mode, the chief ceremony was the offering of a cake of spelt, made to Jupiter in the presence of the pontifex and flamen Dialis with ten witnesses. The coemptio again was a symbolic sale in which the father delivered his daughter to her husband as a piece of property, she at the same time declaring her consent. In the betrothal the bridegroom gave the bride earnest-money, as in other cases of contract, or a ring in its stead. The usus resembled our handfasting, the only thing required being that the woman should live a year in the man's house without absenting herself from his bed for three nights.
Our modern 'best-man' is no doubt the survival of the bridegroom's best helper in the act of capture. In the good old times there were many hearty wedding customs now considered almost as indecorous as Squire Western's jokes would be, such as the struggle for the bride's garters, the drinking of healths in the bridal chamber, the singing of boisterous and appropriate songs outside the door, and the like. The throwing of rice is not an indigenous English custom, and has displaced the strewing of herbs, flowers, and rushes on the way to church. The giving of garlands, gloves, and the like has fallen into disuse; but knots and favours are still used symbolic of indissolubility; and the ring and bridescake retain their place, oldest and most universal of our wedding customs. The wedding-feast was sometimes protracted for a week, and it was formerly the universal custom amongst the poor for the guests to bring contributions of all kinds in what were called penny-weddings, so that the young couple not only saved the expense of the feast, but had something over on which to begin housekeeping. The modern custom of giving presents is a survival of a time when such were more immediately useful than they now often are. Many minor customs are observed in different corners of the kingdom, governing the whole order of procedure, and these it is necessary to respect in order to ensure success in the enterprise. Thus in Shropshire the bride must be dressed entirely in new clothes, of any colour but green, without even a pin that she had ever used before; although elsewhere it is lucky to wear something already worn by a happy bride. Often the bride's father does not go to church; the mother never does. Great pains used to be taken to select a favourable day—the importance of this we see in the dislike to May (q.v.), or again in the Bedouin preference for Friday, the Chinese for spring or the last month in the year. In olden times the actual sale of wives was not unknown in England, and we are told that the second Duke of Chandos bought his second wife in 1744 from her husband, an ostler in Newbury, who was offering her for sale as the duke passed through the town. See FAMILY, MARRIAGE, HANDFASTING, BRIDE, RING, JUS PRIME NOCTIS.