Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1920 — UNFAIR TO GROOM [ARTICLE]

UNFAIR TO GROOM

Why Should Man Be Denied “Ancestral Hamess?” Bride Allowed to Tajce Pride In Wearing the Gown in Which Grandmother Was Married, but for Him, Nothing Doing. Why does a man never get married in ancestral harness? asks a writer in the New York Evening Sun. One reads in the report of,a recent wedding In, New Haven, Conn., that “the bride (Miss Dorothy W. Day) wore a gown which was worn by her grandmother when the latter was married fifty years ago.” Tn other cases it is not the entire gown, but the “bridal dress was trimmed with rare old lace that was part of the wedding finery of the bride’s great grandmother when that was married, about seventy-five years before.” But who ever read, “Mr. Bridegroom was quite handsome in a suit of black which was worn by his grandfather, the Hon. John Bridegroom, when the latter married Miss Mehitable Spanker in 1860?” Nor does one ever learn from a modern wedding* report: “The bridegroom’s feet were clad in shoes that his great-great grandfather, Capt. Peddedlah Timkin, wore at Bunker Hill and Valley Forge. The shoes, with only slight restoration necessary, are in marvelous condition and lent a distinctly revolutionary flavor to the bridal occasion.”

In fact, the bridegroom’s clothing never gets mention, beyond “the conventional black.” If it did it wbuld be only to relate some disaster too important, unusual or ridiculous to be omitted, even in a wedding narrative. Two chief reasons are advanced for » the lack of ancestral male garments at the bridal altar. One reason is the difficulty of making a man-look even passable in his grandfather s rig, whereas a girl becomes more beauti- • ful in the garments of a bygone day. Moreover, a man appearing for his wedding In a John Han* cock coat and % knickers would claim more attention than the bride, and that would be fatal at any wedding. But the real reason why a man does not marry in his grandfathers scenery is because It is not Grandmother put her wedding dress carefully away and preserved it for her children. Granddad put his away for the nonce, but he was in no circumstances to preserve a perfectly good suit for another- generation. He needed It in his own business. So eventually his bridal attire went the way of all men’s clothing. But it would be refreshing, some critics of the times say, to read once in a while in wedding reports: “The bridegroom’s svelte shape was admirably set off by the bridal pants worn -seventy-five years ago by his paternal grandfather, the celebrated Squire Blnglewhlffle, on the occasion of his marriage to the beautiful Prudence Winterbottom.