Wedding Antiques: Everything Old
is New Again
Victorian Influence
Shoes to Soup Cans
Flowers and Tussy Mussys
Soap Bubbles
Email
page to a friend
Wedding
Antiques: Everything Old is New Again
Weddings are experiencing an antiques revival showing that everything old is new again! Antique wedding accessories have taken center stage at today’s wedding showers, ceremonies, and receptions. At local wedding supply or arts and crafts stores, you can find updated versions of wedding items from the past. These antique-inspired objects highlight the past making today’s brides blush with antique style.
Victorian
Influence
Remembering the Renaissance when important letters were sealed for security, today’s brides use white wax and wax seals for correspondence ranging from love letters to wedding invitations. Late 19th Century wax seals may turn up in grandma’s attic or at your local flea market with price tags ranging from $50 to $500.
Old, favorite wedding traditions are reinvented. At the ceremony, an abundance of Victorian style ribbons and flowers symbolize purity, love, and good fortune. Few knew more about good fortune than Queen Victoria. When it came to trend setting, Victoria was, well, the Queen. Inspirational today, Victorian wedding traditions are coveted with contemporary brides. Like the wearing of a white dress, the Victorian shoe tradition was established in the mid to late 1800s. Today, favors in the form of shoes are the 21st Century version of a longstanding wedding ritual.
Shoes to Soup
Cans
In ancient times, a bride's shoes were transferred, along with responsibility for her well-being from her father to her new husband at the wedding. This ancient custom grew into the Victorian tradition of tossing shoes at the married couple’s wedding carriage as they departed. As chronicled in William Frith’s 1881 painting called
For Better/For Worse, guests aimed shoes at the open wedding carriage, blew whistles, and honked horns. Believed that the noise distracted evil spirits from the newlyweds, the shoes symbolized a prosperous life.
During all the post-wedding excitement, if a tossed shoe landed inside the wedding carriage with the couple, then the couple would enjoy a lifetime of wealth and prosperity. Today, the contemporary wedding trend of tying shoes and cans to a car’s fender address these wedding traditions. We now use size 8 slingbacks to denote prosperity and add Campbell soup cans as noisemakers.
Some brides feared getting beaned by a flying loafer at her wedding and instead, decided to place a painfully large coin in her shoe. In an effort to insure good fortune, history indicates that many 19th Century brides believed that it was worth the discomfort. Today, the shoe as a wedding symbol may be found in a variety of forms from favors to decorations.
Flowers and Tussy
Mussys
Before flowers comprised a bridal bouquet, brides carried garlic down the aisle. Used to ward off evil spirits, smelly garlic was later replaced with flowers including favorites such as lilies (purity), ivy (fidelity), and roses (love).
According to floral experts, today’s brides are selecting white flowers for their wedding bouquets. Most choose the ever-popular calla lilies –- a biblical flower that symbolizes the purity of the Virgin Mary. Simple but elegant wedding bouquets recall the Victorian style of wedding florals accompany flowing ribbons and period flower holders called tussy mussys as seen on period postcards.
Victorian tussy mussys have returned with enthusiasm for today's brides as the antique bouquet holders are now in vogue as we celebrate the 100 year revival of Victorian wedding styles. If you have your great grandmother’s tussy mussy from her wedding in the late 1800s, it could range in value from $250 to $1,200 depending on market, condition, and type.
Soap Bubbles
After the nuptials, today’s couples are choosing to mark their ceremonial wedding departure with soap bubbles. Replacing traditional rice, soap bubbles symbolize the brevity of life and remind the couple to carpe diem! This soapy wedding tradition dates back to the French Rococo period as captured by French artist Chardin’s painting,
The Soap Bubble, 1750. At contemporary weddings, soap bubbles remind newlyweds to enjoy life to the fullest. Sage advice from the ages!
Dr. Lori
Director
Masterpiece Technologies Inc.
