June Weddings and Wedding Dresses
June is the most popular month for weddings.
But why?
According to Bridetide, there are several reasons:
Weather
Temperatures are moderate in June, not too warm and rarely too cold, making outdoor weddings a choice.
Flowers
June offers a wider (and cheaper) choice of colorful flowers to help lower the cost of a wedding.
Favor from Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage.
Romans planned weddings in June believing their marriage would be showered with luck and good wishes from the gods above. The tradition continued.
Historical reasons include:
Harvest
Wedding dates in the past were chosen based on peak harvest times. If you married in June, a summer pregnancy would still be early enough in the season that a wife could help with manual work during that year’s harvest period. A spring birth meant the recovered bride would be able to help in the next year’s harvest.
Bathing
At one time in our culture, regular bathing was a once-a-year event usually during the last part of May or the beginning of June. A June wedding meant the couple would have had their “annual bath” and were the most presentable (less stinky).
Back in 1938, my parents scheduled a June wedding most likely because of the weather. We live in Texas and it’s not yet unbearably hot. Her mother made her wedding dress of imported Alençon lace.
It’s a wedding dress with a unique story to tell.
Twenty-five years after my mother and father’s June wedding, I wore the same dress.
We chose our non-June wedding date for practical reasons. Back then, the Memorial Day holiday was celebrated on May 30 and that year it was a Thursday, the day we married. We honeymooned nearby over the weekend and returned on Monday to classes and jobs.
Twenty-four years later, our daughter aka Chicken Wrangler Sara wore the dress at her wedding. Sara chose the second most popular month for weddings – August.
Three times a firstborn daughter has worn the beautiful hand-stitched dress. Each time with only minor alterations.
My mother was only four feet eleven inches tall, so my grandmother let the hem out for me to wear, then I added lace to the hem for my daughter, who was a couple of inches taller than I am.
Between weddings, the dress stays tucked safely in a cedar chest which was originally my mother’s hope chest.