The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 5 July 2004

Royalty for a Day

A week from today, I’ll be a newlywed of barely two days. But before then, I will be what almost every child dreams of someday being – royalty. From my tiara and white wedding dress to Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” and even the wedding bands themselves, my new husband and I will no doubt be basking in the royal treatment, even if it is only for a day. And much of it we will indeed owe to royalty, since they have been trendsetters in that regard for hundreds of years. 

While the tiara is perhaps the object at a wedding most associated with royalty, it has actually been a common part of non-royal weddings since the 15^th century. By that time, some form of a tiara was almost always included in an aristocratic woman’s dowry and would undoubtedly be worn at her wedding. The concept trickled down to the lower classes and even in the early years of the tradition, women who couldn’t afford a tiara of precious metal or stones would mimic the concept with flowers. Traditionally, tiara etiquette demands that a woman should not wear a tiara before her wedding day, as it is said to symbolize “the crowning of love.”  

Despite its longevity, the tiara’s popularity among brides has waxed and waned dramatically over the centuries. It might have disappeared from the modern wedding ceremony altogether had it not been for the periodic high-profile royal wedding. Although Diana’s use of the Spencer tiara for her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981 most immediately comes to mind, the ill-fated Princess Charlotte made an equally dramatic impact at her 1816 wedding when she wore a diamond tiara resembling rose buds and leaves, thus reawakening the trend among the aristocracy and gentry.  

The idea of a white wedding dress is so engrained in our consciousness that it’s easy to forget it has not always been a meaningful part of the marriage ceremony. Any bride worried that she does not have the right to wear white at her wedding will be interested in learning that the idea of white representing purity is a modern invention. It is actually blue that has traditionally represented purity, while white represented joy and happiness. This is the reason the Virgin Mary is always depicted in blue and brides in Biblical times wore blue dresses for their weddings.  

According to bridal history, royalty not only introduced the white wedding dress, they also made it popular. Anne of Brittany is credited as having been the first bride to wear white when she married Louis XII of France in 1499. Considering that she had already been married to Charles VIII of France, with whom she had borne four children, her white dress certainly did not imply purity. Despite Anne’s innovation, most women prior to the 19^th century simply wore the best dress they could afford as a wedding dress, regardless of the color. By the time Queen Victoria came to the throne, most royal women wore silver wedding dresses – a tradition Victoria eschewed when she chose a white gown for her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. This time the tradition stuck, enough so that a famous little wedding poem reads, “Married in white, you have chosen right.” 

Queen Victoria seems to have taken such sayings very seriously. In fact, she took the age-old saying, “Marry in the month of May, and you’ll live to rue the day,” so seriously that she supposedly banned her children from marrying during the month of May. 

Like mother like daughter, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Victoria, The Princess Royal, was also an innovator when it came to weddings. A music lover, “Vicky” chose her own music for her 1858 wedding to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, including Richard Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus,” from the 1848 opera “Lohengrin,” and Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” written for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” More recently, Diana’s wedding certainly inspired at least a few brides to abandon Wagner in favor of Jeremiah Clarke’s beautiful “Trumpet Voluntary” for their march down the aisle. 

Although the modern British royal family traditionally exchanges wedding bands of Welsh gold, we supposedly owe the plain gold bands many couples opt for to Queen Mary I of England. She bucked the medieval and Renaissance trend of exchanging elaborate jewel-encrusted rings when she opted for a plain, simple wedding band for her marriage to Philip of Spain in 1554. And it’s not just the wedding band that has been influenced by royalty. In 860, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a groom intending to marry must provide an engagement ring as a symbol of his intent. In simply following this edict, Holy Roman Emperor Maxmilian I may have been an accidental innovator when he gave Mary of Burgundy a diamond engagement ring in 1477.  Even the humble ring pillow owes its origins to royalty, recalling in a humbler manner the method of carrying the crown during a royal coronation. 

Undoubtedly, the most delicious and anticipated part of any wedding is the cake. Prior to the Restoration, however, it was more of a spectacle than a decadent treat. It seems the custom was for guests to bring small cakes, which were haphazardly stacked as high as possible. Bride and groom were then positioned on either side of the mountain of cakes and had to attempt to kiss each other without knocking the cakes down. If they were successful, it supposedly meant they would have a prosperous life together. Thankfully, during the reign of King Charles II, a French chef visiting London found the tradition so unbearable that he introduced the concept of a large, elegant and richly decorated cake – the forerunner of our modern wedding cakes. Tradition also tells us that a baker in London’s Ludgate Hill modeled a wedding cake after the elegant spire of Wren’s Saint Bride’s Church in London, creating the first three-tier wedding cake.  

Queen Victoria’s wedding cake was reportedly nine feet in circumference, weighed 300 pounds and started the trend for cake toppers depicting the bride and groom. Her granddaughter, Princess Victoria Eug�nie of Battenberg, had an even grander wedding cake when she married King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906. At more than six feet tall and weighing in at over 600 pounds, her cake had to be cut with a knife that was a foot and a half long. Perhaps more importantly, her grand confection introduced Spain to the tradition of the wedding cake for the first time.  

Personally, my earliest image of a wedding outside of storybook fairytales was that of Lady Diana to Prince Charles. Of course, I know now that it was more of a fiction than the fairytales, but it certainly did a great deal to influence my concept of what kind of wedding I hoped to have when I grew up. Fortunately for me, I’ve learned a lot about life since then and, even though I’ll walk down the aisle to Wagner wearing the tiara and the white dress, exchange simple wedding bands with my husband, and cringe when we have to cut into the beautifully designed cake, the real crowning moment of being royalty for a day will be when I can look at the man I love and call him my husband for the first time.

As I’ll be a bit “busy” this coming weekend, I will not have a column on July 12^th, but will return on July 19^th.

Until next week,

- Tori Van Orden

Tori's wedding

As you can read from above column, Tori is getting married! To celebrate this event "The Unofficial British Royal Family Website" will be compiling a page with messages from Tori's readers to congratulate her with her wedding. If you would like your message to be included, please send it to: with in the subject line "Tori's wedding'" and check back next week to see all messages.