Hello friends,

This is my first *official* post (unless you’d like to count my welcome post, which I don’t) and I’m so glad you’re here!

I got inspired to write this post as I recently got engaged (exciting!) and I’ve been trying to find ways to incorporate my love for history in our wedding without being too outdated to my more modern guests, who may or may not know why we do things a little different than your modern beach wedding. No hate to beach weddings – I enjoy things to be more antiquated and not so gritty on my feet. Not that people in the 16th century were having beach weddings on the regular.

Historically, marriages were not made out of love. The lower classes had more freedom as far as choosing spouses, but the middle and higher classes utilized marriage as a social climbing tool – whether it’s to get more wealth, more social status, or securing alliances between countries. There are many examples of this – a prime example is Elizabeth of York and Henry VII. The Yorks and Tudors were on opposing sides of the War of the Roses, and after the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor took the throne. Elizabeth and Henry’s wedding followed soon after the battle, and marked the beginning of the Tudor dynasty (1485-1603). Their marriage was not born out of love for each other, but rather to end the war and bring some stability back to England.

There were many marriages predetermined when the spouses to be were only children – which is deeply uncommon in Western society (and thank goodness for that). These children would be engaged as small children, and sometimes would marry the person they were pre-contracted to. Other times, the engagement would be broken if disputes arose or if they found better matches.

Thankfully, my marriage to be is out of love and not a contract, but I did want to include some historical customs. My spouse to be has also taken interest in older traditions for weddings, and it’s been so fun to research old wedding acts. Our oldest custom *so far* is choosing to be handfast during our wedding ceremony.

What is handfasting? In our modern time, it’s a symbolic ceremony where cords or fabric are used to bind a couple (and where the phrase “tying the knot” comes from). It’s not legally binding, but is a beautiful way to symbolize the union of two souls.

In the Tudor era, handfasting was used to formally declare that the couple agreed to be married (generally a month or so before the church wedding). Handfasting was also legally binding – it could only be dissolved by death. The act was viewed as valid as taking vows before a priest, so it wasn’t really anything to sneeze at. If anything, it was as equally important as the later church wedding.

Over time, England made moves that required an officiating priest or magistrate a requirement for the marriage to be legal. Handfasting started to decline by the beginning of the modern era, and the 1753 Marriage Act effectively ended handfasting as a custom in England.

Scotland, however, took its time before making changes and looked different. In the 17th and 18th century, the Gaelic Scholar Martin Martin wrote about the timeline of handfasting, and you can really see how it differs from England’s short term marriage. In Scotland, a man could have a “wife” that lives with him for one year (without being married), and if at the end he wants to marry her, great! If not, he gets to return her to her parents. That doesn’t seem super ideal to me, but maybe it worked.

But, as time went on, changes were made to handfasting. They were forced to be performed in public, and then moved to some areas not recognizing their legal validity. By the 20th century, the Marriage Act of 1939 officially ended the recognization of handfasting in Scotland.

In the later 20th century and now 21st century, handfasting is a symbolic act in a wedding ceremony, and had a revival in Neopaganism that brought it back into the limelight for weddings. By the 2010s, the Neopaganism associations fell away and now it’s just something some couples do regardless of religious beliefs and heritage.

My partner and I both have English and Scottish heritage (although mine is closer than his LOL), and one of my favorite hobbies is to research my ancestry. Planning our wedding has allowed to bond over historical wedding traditions that we generally wouldn’t really know much about. I’m super excited to see what other fun historical traditions we come across.

So long, friends.