In the eighteenth century weddings were accompanied by much revelry and extravagance. Gloves, rings, and scarves, as at funerals, were given away in such profusion as to call for legislation to check the abuse. Unstinted feasting and drinking were the order of the day. “Sack-posset” appears to have been the favorite wedding beverage. “All the friends were entertained at the bride’s home with a collation or supper, and afterward a dance; while in the country they were the most important social events. The banns were proclaimed in church, and all the neighbors were invited from the pulpit to attend the ceremony. On the day of the wedding muskets were fired, a procession was formed, and marched to the bride’s house, where the marriage took place; and then came a dinner, a dances, and great merrymaking. Usually these wedding feasts lasted through the day and evening, but they were sometimes kept up for two or three days. On one occasion at New London there was a great wedding dance on the day after the marriage, when ninety-two ladies and gentlemen assembled and proceeded to dance ninety-two jigs, fifty-two contra dances, forty-five minuets, and seventeen hornpipes. This was probably an extreme case; but all over New England weddings were great occasions, and were celebrated with much pomp and rejoicing.”
Excerpted from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Chiefly in England and the United States with an Introductory Analysis of the Legislature and the Theories of Primitive Marriage and the Family, volume two, by George Elliott Howard. Published by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1904.