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As you consider how to plan for your own perfect wedding, you may have an interest in knowing how wedding ceremonies developed, and were performed, in the past.
A Brief History of Marriage
Marriage as we know it today is different from what it was centuries ago. Primitive marriage happened when two people wished to marry and simply announced it to their families. The announcement itself constituted the marriage, the families threw a party, and the couple were proclaimed married. The idea of the marriage announcement is still used in today’s ceremonies: it is why the vows are spoken audibly and publicly.
As time went on, land and other chattel became owned by the upper classes, and marriage became more formalized. Landed families desired that the land remain in the family, so these families married into other landed families. Through these marriages they forged political alliances, and social obligations, which logically extended to their relatives and kin.
From the 1100's on, the Church became more influential in Christian marriage, and by the 1600's the Church began to legislate marriage -- saying what could and could not be done. As the Protestant Reformation began, two different views of marriage began to emerge. The Catholic Church considered marriage a necessity to accommodate human frailty and weakness -- meaning sexual expression which it deemed sinful(!), and the Protestant Church spoke of "companionate marriage," -- an emotional bond that formed between a husband and wife. Later, the emotional bond became the reason for marriage itself. And in 1965, the Catholic Church finally threw out human frailty and decreed it was the love of the couple which mattered most in marriage.
Today, marriage is grounded in the active love of the husband and wife which leads to intimacy and communication. Although this idea of marriage may well be alien to our ancestors and to some traditional cultures, it represents a greater level of understanding of the marriage bond, and living in a family.
As the Reformation spawned differences in the Church, European Protestants began to require a public ceremony for marriage, with the presence of witnesses. Presently, the courts have taken hold of this legal requirement and when you secure a license to marry, you must only declare former marriages. Since property is private, disclosure rests only with the couple.
After the Civil War, with heightened levels of gonorrhea and syphilis, prospective marriage partners had to submit to medical examinations. Anyone determined to have an STD was precluded from marrying. But today, with increased medical awareness and the proliferation of drugs, state legislatures have changed these requirements, and in most states, only a license to marry is necessary.
We have come a long way since invoking St. Paul’s statement, "It is better to marry, than to burn in hell." We marry now because we are intact, we are in love, and our partner can aid us in becoming even more than we presently are.