Home › Weddings › A Wild Rose Wedding
A Wild Rose Wedding
WILD-ROSE wedding which one bride planned was wonderfully attractive. In one corner of the living-room an arch of woven wire was erected, and covered with graceful wild clematis vines and wild roses. On each window-sill stood a jar of wild roses, and the mantel was banked with them.
The two bridesmaids wore pale green dresses, and carried baskets overflowing with wild roses; the maid of honor wore a gown of wild-rose pink, and carried an arm bouquet of wood maidenhair ferns and wild clematis.
The dining-table was decorated effectively.
A crystal bowl filled with wild-rose sprays which trailed over the sides and along the table was placed in the center on a mat of [150] hardy sword ferns. From above the middle of the table four garlands of wild clematis were looped down to the edge of the round table and held with bows of green tulle.
Glass dishes of olives and pink, green, and white candies on the table still further carried out the color scheme.
The menu, which was served in buffet style, was pink and white. It consisted of strawberry and pineapple cocktail, with a sprig of green mint in each glass, sliced ham and pressed chicken, potato chips, hot rolls, raspberry ice, white-frosted cakes cut in the shape of bells, pink-frosted cakes in the shape of hearts.
Fruit punch, pink with strawberry juice and green with mint, was served on the rosebowered porch by a pretty girl in a roseflowered frock. [151] A
A wedding held in a living room, decorated entirely with flowers and ferns that were gathered rather than bought. The scheme is pink, green and white, and the food is part of the decoration.
- The arch was homemadeWoven wire bent into an arch in the corner of the room and covered with wild clematis and wild roses. It is a frame anybody can make from heavy fencing wire, and it is the structure the whole ceremony is staged beneath.
- Gathered, and therefore timedWild roses, wild clematis, wood maidenhair, hardy sword fern: all of it came out of hedgerow and woodland. That makes the decoration free and it also pins the wedding to the few weeks the roses are out. Cut the roses the same morning, because they drop fast once they are indoors.
- Pressed chickenCooked chicken pulled from the bone, packed into a tin or mould with its own reduced cooking liquor, weighted and chilled until the stock sets round it. Sliced cold, it holds together. It is the one item on this buffet a modern reader will not recognise, and it is entirely makeable.
- Cocktail here means fruit cupStrawberry and pineapple cocktail with a sprig of mint is a chilled fruit cup in a glass, served first, with nothing alcoholic in it. The punch, pink with strawberry and green with mint, is the same idea scaled up for the porch.
- Food chosen by colourRaspberry ice, white cakes cut as bells, pink cakes cut as hearts, pink and green and white sweets in glass dishes. The menu is assembled to match the flowers, and the flavours were never asked to agree with one another.
- Handling the clematisWild clematis is a plant whose sap can irritate skin. Wear gloves to cut and wire it for the arch and the garlands, and keep it clear of the table and the food.
This is a wedding run entirely by the household. There is no hired room, no florist and no caterer: a corner of the living room, wire from the shed, flowers from the roadside, a buffet that needs nobody seated, and a pretty girl in a flowered frock pouring punch on the porch because somebody had to. The ambition is wholly visual, and the thing it spends most freely is other people’s afternoons.