My mother was watching Four Weddings and a Funeral on TV recently.

[alexist]

(It's on at the moment, which is what reminded me.)

Now, American Jewish and English weddings (at least as shown in the film--I assume it's not completely unrealistic) are somewhat different, and my mother finds the differences alternately baffling and amusing. (As do I, to some extent. The concept of the meal being called the "wedding breakfast" caused a great deal of confusion, as I might have mentioned. It makes no logical sense. Why is it breakfast when it's being served in the late afternoon/early evening??)

What my mother found funniest was the hats. We don't wear hats to weddings. (Well, married Orthodox women cover their heads, but it's as likely to be a wig as a hat, and their hats don't look like English wedding ones.) I have to admit that they are a little silly. Mom said "I hope no one expects me to wear one of those things" and I promised that the female members of my family may all go bareheaded. :-)

Comments

[suzylou.livejournal.com]

Breakfast = first meal of the day, generally. So it's the first meal of your married life ie your wedding breakfast.

Probably also the first meal of the day, due to general nerves ;)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

I wouldn't go around thinking that Four Weddings and a Funeral was terribly representative of weddings in the UK. The funeral's pretty accurate though.

[crystal-claire.livejournal.com]

Wedding breakfast -
probably comes also from the church tradition. Within most traditional church weddings, the couple would have Holy Communion as well as the marriage rite. There's a now-obsolete rule saying that you don't eat from the start of the day when taking Holy Communion. Once you have taken communion, you can then break your fast, hence the wedding breakfast. It's now almost entirely an anachronism, and it's a long time since I actually saw a wedding where they seriously described it as a wedding breakfast.

Hats -
This is still a widespread disease, and will tend to vary from family to family. I go to many many weddings, and you quite often find one half of the church almost hatless, and the other half of the church all hatted! Expectations vary, but as a coarse rule, the posher the wedding, the more likely hat-wearing is. Likewise morning suit for the men - some families I know, every male attending the wedding will turn up in morning suit, and every woman will wear a hat. It's much more formal than most. The immediate wedding party would usually involve women wearing hats, but no-one is going to mind in the slightest if your family choose not to - it's all down to personal choice now.
:)