Home › Weddings › A Rainbow Wedding
A Rainbow Wedding
THE HE second bride lived in the city and had a rainbow wedding. The usual green of potted ferns and palms formed the background of decorations, but over the rounded archway which opened into a small alcove a "rainbow" of tulle - rose, pale pink, yellow, green, blue, and lavender - was arranged.
Pink and yellow roses with green foliage were supplemented in the living-room by blue and lavender tulle on the vases. The six bridesmaids wore gowns which matched the tulle rainbow and they carried pink roses.
On the table in the dining-room was a bowl of pink roses, and from the table dome a [163] myriad of baby ribbon streamers in the same varied colors came down at six points, and were held in place by six fluffy favor dolls, dressed in tulle to match the six bridesmaids, to whom they were afterward given as souvenirs.
The menu consisted of chicken à la King, small sandwiches, olives, Neapolitan ice-cream, fancy frosted cakes, and coffee.
A wedding at home, written up as a case to copy. The whole scheme is one idea carried through in sixes, and the food is a short list at the end of it.
- Six of everythingSix colours in the tulle rainbow over the archway, six bridesmaids in gowns to match, six ribbon streamers coming down over the table, six favour dolls dressed to match the six bridesmaids. The scheme is arithmetic rather than floral, and it falls apart the moment the number of bridesmaids changes.
- The decoration is the favourThe dolls holding the ribbon streamers in place were given to the bridesmaids afterwards as souvenirs. One object doing two jobs is the most quietly useful idea on the page and it costs nothing to copy.
- Chicken à la KingDiced chicken in a cream sauce with mushroom and pimiento, usually over toast or in a pastry case. It is entirely makeable and has only gone out of fashion, and what recommended it here is that it is the one hot dish on a menu of cold ones.
- Neapolitan ice-creamThree flavours in stripes, which at this date meant ice frozen in a brick mould and cut across in slices so that the stripes showed on the plate. The supermarket block is its descendant, but the point was always the cut face.
- Palms and potted fernsThe green background is hired or borrowed greenery moved in and out for the day. It is the default of every at-home occasion in this book, and the tulle, the roses and the ribbon are what gets laid over the top of it.
- One hot dish, no catererSandwiches, olives, cakes, coffee and ice-cream round a single cooked dish. A menu built this way can be produced in a domestic kitchen while a wedding is going on in the next room, which is precisely what was happening.
This wedding took place in a living room. The ceremony was under a rounded archway opening into a small alcove, the guests stood about among the potted palms, and the eating was at the dining-room table, which tells you the size of the party and the size of the bill. The book introduces her as the second bride, and that phrasing matters: these pages are reports of particular weddings offered up as models rather than designs invented at a desk. The detail that survives best is the kind nobody would trouble to make up — the vases in the living room given blue and lavender tulle because the roses standing in them were pink and yellow and the rainbow needed finishing somewhere.