The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-03-01
EVENING CHAT
BY RUTH CAMERON.

Neither Theodore nor Angelina
felt as if they could bind themselves
to any. preconceived form of words
and accordingly uttered such as the
Lord gave them at the moment
I ran across that delicious descrip-
ton of a Quaker wedding in an old
letter the other day, and as | read it,
1 wondered, just wondered what would
Theodore and Angelina who baked so
vigorously at anything SO formal as a
"preconceived form of words have
thought about a modern fashionable
wedding.
And if they would have been aghast
at the agonizing conventionality and
cut-and-dried formality of that per-
formance-yes. that's quite the proper
word for the average fashionable we'd
ding-what on earth would they have
thought at that most humorous and
yet most painful of all modern con-
ventionalities-the wedding rehearsal.
! 1t almost seems to me as if wedding
rehearsals ought to be forbidden by
the church, they are such a desecra-
ton of the solemn ceremony.
| But then suppose things didn't go
right before all those people," I can
hear some fashionable bride protest.
ing
What then-is it a vaudeville show
for society with yourself and the
groom as headliners that you are get
ting up, or is it that you are inviting
your friends to help you solemnize a
sacred and wonderful contract2
If it's the vaudeville, Miss Fashion
able Bride-here's a suggestion for
you. Don't be stingy but have it for
charity and charge an entrance fee.
That would make a great sensation.
Just think of all the people who would
come. You'd surely have enough to
give a big sum to charity and to de-
fray all expenses of the most hand
somely trimmed church of the season
besides.
1 heard of a couple the other day
who weren't really married on their
hearsal the minister forgot and said
the final, 81 do pronounce thee man
and Wife which makes the ceremony
binding. So on their wedding day they
tried to keep the story secret, but it
leaked out and they were laughed at
almost as much as they deserved.
The next thing you know we will
| be rehearsing funerals because ''it
would be so terrible to make a mis-
take before all those people, you
know
If I were a clergyman 1 think I
should absolutely refuse to desecrate
the wedding ceremony by a formal re-
hearsal of it.
If the bride and groom want to
| know where to make the proper re-
SpOuSoS II - surely eIOuSn LOT Lno11
to read the service over in the prayer
books
Shall my wedding be a vaudeville
show? is a question which is up to
every bride and groom to answer.
! By inviting huge concourse of peo-
pie who come in the same spirit in
which they would go to any other
"show''-by rehearsing the perform
ance-by surrounding themselves with
a train of bridesmaids and ushers and
maids and matrons of honor and flow
er girls and what not, as deliberately
gotten up as the chorus of a modern
comic opera, they answer in the af-
firmative.
BY refusing to rehearse the cere-
mony and by inviting only those peo-
| pie who love them and whom they
4 love, to see them made man and wife,
and by trimming down this unruly
growth of fuss and feathers which has
tscome to obscure the true beauty of the
marriage ceremony, they may answer
in the negative