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An Orchard Pageant
THERE'S HERE'S no wedding quite so picturesque as the outdoor one. Famous is the orchard wedding beneath a blossoming apple tree, where the air is filled with fragrance and the bridal party comes winding through the trees to the trysting place. It needn't be only a poetic fancy, either - it's entirely practical, and if you have a comparatively small house, why not give your guests the beautiful freedom of outdoors instead of cooping them up in the house?
Mark out the path beforehand by mowing the grass in the chosen direction. Select plenty of ushers to conduct the guests to the spot and provide benches and settees for the older folk, who may find it tiring to stand till the wedding party arrives. [154] There need be no decorations except the natural ones of the orchard; preparations may consist of raking out dead leaves and branches.
A victrola may be arranged in the proper place to furnish the wedding processional or perhaps some musical friend may be found to play the violin.
The simpler the pageant, the more effective it will be. First may come a tiny flower girl in a white frock, swinging a cretonne flowered sunbonnet from which she tosses apple blossom sprays.
If there are bridesmaids, they should wear the simplest of pink dresses with pink fillets on their hair or else wide straw hats trimmed only with a tiny wreath of flowers.
Possibly the maid of honor may add a note of contrast by wearing forget-me-not blue.
Last of all appear the bride and bridegroom, together, for in an old-fashioned orchard wedding that is less awkward than for the bridegroom to come from some other direction. The bride should wear a simple white gown formal satin would be out of place. [155] The wedding breakfast may be served picnic fashion on a long table of boards decked with apple blossoms. Toasts in strawberry punch are in order while an orchestra of robins and bluebirds sing in the apple trees round about unless the noise drives them away. The little waiting maids should wear white aprons and white caps with an apple blossom sprig stuck in the top.
Following them came a flock of flower children, tiny girls and boys scattering flower petals from the high-handled baskets swinging in their chubby little hands. Last of all, four abreast, came the bride and bridegroom, with the bride's mother, who gave her away, on the right of the bride, and the best man on the left of the bridegroom.
The ribbon girls had accompanied the procession at the proper intervals holding the aisle ribbon, and the last two brought up the rear, winding up the ribbon as they came.
The reception took place immediately afterward on the lawn, and the guests were served [156] with ice-cream and cake wherever they chanced to be by the attentive ribbon girls.
In the back yard at a long table a colored caterer superintended the service.
Altogether it was a most successful wedding and at the same time a fairly easy one to plan since there was no question of overcrowding in the house, although in case of rain it could have been managed there.
A
An outdoor wedding in an apple orchard, with sensible logistics and one of the plainest records in the book of who was expected to do the work.
- Blossom will not waitThe whole conceit depends on the trees being in flower, and that window is short and moves several weeks with the season. A date fixed in advance is a bet, and since the book never raises the question, it is the first thing to settle.
- BeesAn orchard in full blossom is working. Open punch bowls and ice cream under flowering trees will draw bees and wasps, so keep the punch covered and set the serving table well away from the trees.
- Mow the aisleThe one piece of pure practical sense on the page: cut the grass along the chosen line beforehand so the path reads from a distance and nobody walks through wet grass in satin. Rake out the fallen branches as well, because a branch in long grass is what people trip on.
- Ice cream on a lawnThe page has guests served wherever they happen to be standing. Ice cream does not survive that in warm weather, so this menu needs either a shaded holding point packed with ice or a different dessert. Cake with strawberries does the same job and will stand.
- Strawberry punchCrushed strawberries, sugar, lemon and water, with nothing in it stronger. Make it the day before so the fruit gives up its colour, strain it, and add anything fizzy only at the table.
- Ribbon girlsA vanished job. Two or more young women walked the procession holding a ribbon along the aisle and wound it up behind the party as it passed. It was choreography for the look of the thing, and in a mown orchard aisle it also solves the real problem of marking a path across open grass.
The most informative sentence on the page is the one about the back yard, where a colored caterer is said to have superintended the service at a long table. Black caterers had been the backbone of the American catering trade for generations before this book was printed, running the food at weddings, balls and civic dinners in the eastern cities and training the men who followed them, and the sentence records both that professional fact and the arrangement that went with it: the person running the meal is placed out of sight of the party he is feeding, while the guests are on the lawn among the apple trees. Everything else on the page is about the picturesque — robins in the branches, a flower girl with a cretonne sunbonnet, the bride and bridegroom walking in together because a lone bridegroom coming from another direction would look awkward. The one line of real organisation is at the back of the house, and the book sets it down without noticing what it has said.