The Bride is Frankenstein

This may be the scariest article I've ever read.

Here's a snippet from today's New York Times:

A bride’s request that you whiten your grayish teeth can strain a relationship. Samantha Goldberg, a wedding planner in Chester, N.J., recalled a bride who asked her attendants to get professionally spray-tanned for a Hawaiian-theme reception.Alas, two women were claustrophobic and couldn’t bear standing in a tanning capsule. “They asked the bride if they could use regular tanning cream from a salon,” Ms. Goldberg said. The bride refused; she wanted everyone to be the same shade. The women ultimately declined to be bridesmaids. “Friendships of 20-plus years gone over a spray tan?” Ms. Goldberg said. “Sad!”

Jilted

This bride to be sued her ex when he called off the wedding, and a jury saw fit to award her $150,000 for financial and mental suffering. While the tidy sum is newsworthy, the suing - and winning - for broken engagements has been happening since men and women have gone public with their intent to get hitched.

"Breach of promise" suits were established as early as medieval times to hold a suitor responsible for breaking an engagement. And by suitor, I mean the man, because it was inevitably the ex-bride to be who suffered serious blows to her reputation.

According to wikipedia:

The main factors [for suing] were compensation for the denial of the woman's expectations of becoming "established" in a household (supported by her husband's wealth), and/or possible damage to her reputation — since there were a number of ways that the reputation of a young never-married woman of the "genteel" classes could be damaged by a broken engagement, or an apparent period of intimacy which did not end in a publicly-announced engagement, even if few people seriously thought that she had lost her virginity. She might be viewed as having broken the code of maidenly modesty of the period by imprudently offering up her affections without having had a firm assurance of future marriage.

So it's nothing new. But what I find fascinating about this particular case? His particularly dirtbaggy method of calling it off.

The Dunmow Flitch Trials

One of the main reasons I started this blog, besides the whole wedding getting called off drama of aeons ago, was the discovery this tradition.

The Dunmow Flitch Trials are an ancient tradition referenced in The Wife of Bath's Tale by Chaucer. Legend has it that one Lord Fitzwalter and his wife disguised themselves as peasants and begged the Prior for his blessing on their marriage. The Prior did so, and overjoyed (or in my version, temporarily insane) Fitzwalter gifted his land to the Prior. In thanks, the Prior awarded the devoted couple a "flitch" or side of bacon. The legend has now taken form as an actual trial that occurs every four years that sees married couples defending their relationship before a judge and jury. They are questioned and cross examined, and if they are judged as never having wished themselves unmarried, they are paraded around the streets on chairs, given a slab of pork and forced to kneel on pointed stones to take the Flitch Oath.

Oh, those Brits.

It had long been a dream of mine to actually attend the Trials. I had the privilege of interviewing the judge of 2004's event and was monkeying around with the idea of going. But then Mr. Right showed up, the dollar went down, and the thought of flying overseas with my teething toddler gives me heartburn.

So from my stateside armchair, I salute this past weekend's four successful claimants to the Flitch:

Michael & Janet Denny (Rayleigh, Essex)
Graeme Fearon & Amanda Horner (Ramsbury, Wilts.)
Des & Claire Rayner (Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middx.)

and

Jeff Dotts & Erin Albers (Nashville, Tennessee, USA)

That's right - Nashville!

Congratulations to all of you. Those of you who think your love can withstand the rigors of judge and jury have another four years to get ready.

Rock the Reception

Oh, fabulous choreographers of reality TV, where oh where were you when I got married?