The Favors
FOR wedding favors at a wedding breakor reception a number of interesting little souvenirs can be inexpensively prepared. For instance, there are wee fans (bought at the doll department) with the date lettered on each; tiny straw baskets that look like the one the flower girl carries and are filled with very small artificial forget-me-nots and rose-buds; airy butterflies of white and pale yellow silk, to be fastened to fine threads above the table in the dining-room, where they flutter realistically over the flowers beneath.
More frivolous are very diminutive bridesmaid's hats, and at the wedding of a bride who is going to travel far away there may be small boats, either real or of cardboard, with a flying flag of matrimony at the masthead. [148] The old-fashioned posy gift cards with clasped hands are quaint; so are the little nosegays in white paper frills, and every guest will like a box of bride's cake. [149] A
A short shopping list of keepsakes to give wedding guests. It is the clearest page in the book about where the materials of a party actually came from.
- Breakfast, but not breakfastThe broken word at the opening is a wedding breakfast: the meal served after the ceremony, called a breakfast regardless of the hour of day. Nobody at it was eating breakfast food, and no word in the chapter misleads a modern reader more reliably.
- The doll departmentThe fans and the little baskets are bought at the doll department, which is a sourcing instruction as much as a description — miniatures came from the toy counter of a department store. The equivalent now is a craft shop or a dolls’ house supplier, and the objects themselves are much the same.
- Butterflies on threadButterflies of white and pale yellow silk hung on fine threads above the table so that they hover over the flowers beneath. It needs silk, thread and patience and nothing else, and of everything on the page it is the idea most worth stealing.
- Bride’s cake in a boxA box of cake for every guest to carry home is the one favour here that survived into the present, and it survived because it is useful. The cake was a fruit cake, which is why it travelled and why it kept.
- Dated when writtenThe author calls the clasped-hands posy cards and the paper-frilled nosegays quaint, meaning they were already old-fashioned to her. A party book is a record of fashion, and this is the page where it admits as much.
- The travelling brideSmall boats, real or cut from cardboard, with a flag flying at the masthead, for the wedding of a bride going to live far away. That a standard favour existed for that case says something about how often it happened.
Everything on this page is small, cheap, and made or bought in quantity by the household itself, which is the author’s own claim for it: a number of interesting little souvenirs can be inexpensively prepared. The reception is at home, the table is the dining-room table, the favours are assembled by the family and the date is lettered on each fan by hand. Set beside the formal books on the same shelf, where an occasion is a question of what the kitchen can send up, this is a page about what a hostess can do with silk, paper, thread and a toy counter. And the favour itself is an obligation rather than a flourish. Every guest is to go away holding something, and the book’s job is to make that possible without expense.