Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — Queer Bridal Feasts. [ARTICLE]

Queer Bridal Feasts.

Marriage celebrations and marriage customs follow in the new world maDy of the customs of the old world. Sackposset, the drink of Shakespeare’s time, a rich, thick concoction of boiled ale, eggs and spioes, was drunk at New England weddings, as we learn from the pages of Judge Sewall’s diary, but it did not furnish a very gay wassail, for the Puritan posset-drinking was preceded and followed by the singing of a psalm —and such a psalm! a long, tedious, drawling performance from the Bay Psalm Book. The bride and groom and bridal party walked in a little procession to the meeting house on the Sabbath following the marriage. We read in the Sewall diary of a Sewall bride thus “coming out,” or “walking-out bride,” as it was called in Newburvport. Cotton Mather thought it expedient to thus make public with due dignity the marriage. In some communities the attention of the Interested public was further drawn to the newly married couple in what seems to us a very comic fashion. On the Sabbath following the wedding the gayly dressed bride and groom occupied a prominent seat in the gallery of the meeting-house, and in the middle of the sermon they rose and slowly turned round to display complacently on every side their wedding finery.—[American Folk Lore Journal.