Weddings weren't always like this

I'm intrigued to learn that digitized versions of London marriage licenses from 1521 to 1896 have been made available on-line for researchers.

In reporting the discovery, the Daily Mail uncovered some interesting facts about old-time weddings, including:

• Brides in the 18th century typically wore multi-coloured dresses, or blue gowns (to represent purity). The famous 'white wedding' did not become popular until Queen Victoria chose to wear white when she married Prince Albert of Saxe.
• The wedding cake of today was predated by the 'bride's pie', commonly filled with savoury meat or sweet mince. The lady who found the glass ring concealed inside was thought to be next in line for marriage.
• Wedding rings, an important part of the marriage ceremony since ancient times, became mandatory for the bride under the 1753 Marriage Act - though it was a De Beers advertising campaign 200 years later that popularised the idea that men should present a ring when they proposed.

The report continues:

The collection documents the upsurge of church marriages held after the Act made marriage licences compulsory in an attempt to curb the growth of common-law marriage in the larger cities.

In London, bogus priests had often turned a blind eye to bigamy and under-age marriage by conducting so-called 'Fleet Marriages', named after the notorious area around Fleet Prison in Farringdon.

Family historians will pounce on the new data. Marriage licences typically contain details of the bride and groom as well as their parents or witnesses - the kind of information that has previously only been readily available for the period from 1837 onwards, when central registration of marriages began.

Before 1837, clergymen were not obliged to keep marriage certificates, which were often lost or destroyed - making originals extremely rare.

Around 25,000 surviving London marriage licences, which contain the details of around 100,000 individuals, have been digitised and are now fully searchable online.

Among the famous names who appear in the records are satirical artist William Hogarth, Oliver Cromwell's commander-in-chief Thomas Fairfax, and Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, whose father's marriage is listed.

Most interesting! Genealogists and historians are going to have a field day with these records.

Peter