WAUPACA COUNTY REPUBLICAN

December 18, 1887

 

WOMAN’S PROGRESS

A Palatable Olla Podrida Prepared Specially for Our Fair Readers

Fashions in Dress, Notes on Housekeeping Affairs, and Other Topics of Interest

 

            They say the devil laughs every time he hears wedding bells.  He must be on the broad grin all over the country nowadays.  At some of the fashionable churches in New York, it is said, they don’t take down the awnings or take up the carpets leading from the portals to the curbstone, from Monday morning till Saturday night; and one parson married so many couples last week that, when a baptismal cortege fronted him on Saturday, he asked:  “What name?”

            “Susan Ann,” replied the godfather.

            “Susan Ann, do you take this man for your lawfully wedded husband, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, through sickness and  -”

            “For mercy’s sake!  Don’t marry me to the baby,” whispered the godfather.  “You’re committing bigamy.  You married me this fall to Maria Smith.”

            Thus brought up a round turn, the good minister stopped in time , and baptized Susan Ann, instead of marrying her at the unusual age of 3 months.

            Custom, in most cities, has made the months of November and December the period of many weddings, and this year gives no exception to the rule.  Fashions in brides’ clothes vary less than in other toilets, for white remains the favorite color in the more pretentious cases, and the veil is rarely discarded.  The picture (not included in transcription) shows a bride both correct and pretty in her costume.  White has been, as it should be, the popular wear for first-time brides this year, and moire has been the favorite choice, though there is something elderly in the material.  Watered silk enjoys favor, but satin, with lace over, is always rich and most graceful.  A satin and lace bridal dress is always safe to represent ten times the money any other one can.  Pearl-embroidered robes have been seen frequently, but no one can tell how soon beads will go out, and leave a costly and unfashionable garment on a woman’s hands.  Almost all brides wear their wedding frocks to the principal fetes of the following season. At the last reception of a series given by a woman of fashion in New York, there were eight recent brides in their bridal costumes.  Some one alluded to the affair as the close of a brilliant series, and the hostess said it looked more to her like the clothes of the bridal season.

            The couple in the second picture (not included in transcription) are neatly and properly costumed for a plain church wedding in the day time.  The bridegroom’s frock coat, high collar and middling loose trousers are correct things for the occasion. The coat is nearly black, and the pantaloons may be any lighter hue, with gloves to match.  The bride’s dress is brown satin and velvet, and its cut is new as well as pretty.

            Orange blossoms have lost their grip on custom, and there are so many flowers prettier it is not to be regretted.  In Spain, orange blossoms are used to deck the dead, and their waxen, stiff appearance makes them eminently suitable.  White lilacs, white roses, and white hyacinths of the same variety are far more beautiful.  White lilacs have been cultivated till they are so delicate and graceful, in their improved state, that they enjoy great favor.  With orange blossoms have disappeared some of the tulle that used to figure for bridal veils.  There have been unusual sales in high-class lace for veils.  A veil three yards long and one wide of point d’Alencon or duchess is a magnificent finish to a fine dress.  The old style of a huge square of blonde lace, thrown like a tablecloth over a bride’s head and kept on by a diadem of orange blossoms (nine times out of ten artificial) was always getting the blushing bride into difficulties.  At the time this head-rigging was in vogue the custom was to kiss the bride.  Sometimes the crowd would surge round the poor woman to kiss her rapturously through the veil, and a lot of damp kisses would stick the filmy substance on her cheeks and ears and lay it like a plaster on her blushing nose, from which she would pick it off only to find it glued to her chin.  Then if she undertook to throw it up it invariably hung in a towering, cloud-like fashion on the orange blossoms, making her look as if the domestic cyclone had already struck her.  The newer and expensive veils can be to from one hundred to one thousand dollars.  They are scarf shape.  They are caught in the middle on top of the head with diamond stars or pearl bars, or they are fastened at one end and trail to the edge of the demi-train, kept in place by the floral decorations.  They are extremely rich, and available for other uses when the bride becomes a matron, superintending her own daughter’s wedding.

            The marriage fees of some clergymen must have amounted to more than their salaries this fall.  There is hardly any service a man so willingly pays out his money for, unless it be for a divorce some years later.  The pastor of a wealthy church wedded a rich man recently to a very beautiful girl, who had been an intimate friend for years of the parson’s wife.  She started from the church door on a trip to Europe, and as the minister shook, congratulatingly, the hand of the new groom, he felt a hard substance slipped into his own.  It turned out to be a handsome locket pendant, with the bride’s initials and those of the pastor’s wife done in diamonds.

            “I’ll put your picture in it at once,” said the pleased lady; “it is the first wedding fee that has come to me.”

            So she posted off to the photographer and ordered a reduced head of her husband.  She had hardly got home when a messenger informed her that folded and refolded and jammed in behind the glass they had found a hundred dollar bill.  The Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Pslater Service are waiting anxiously a letter from the other side to know to whom the money belongs, ad the Mrs. Rev. Dr. S. vows it belongs to the locket, and the locket belongs to her.

            The remaining plate (not included in transcription) is devoted to bridesmaids.  A wide scope is permitted to them by fashion, and they may indulge in almost any fancy costume, though all must dress alike, and the bride is commonly a dictator.  The gowns pictured are excellent models for home or elsewhere use, and they embody the latest ideas.

            The craze for bits of wedding cake to dream on has given place to a mania for patches of wedding dresses to incorporate into quilts.  Of course, the dressmaker is the source from which these pieces are gleaned.  Who ever heard of a dressmaker sending bits home to patch a bridal dress?  So the modistes are besieged by their customers for scraps of the wedding costumes they make.  The demand exceeds the supply.  So one clever woman buys remnants of white satin or moire, and rends the pieces into patches to suit her customers.

            At a recent wedding the bride determined to improve on the flora-bell business.  As her own and her bridegroom’s names began with W, the florist got up a rather squat, long-drawn-out W.  Not a soul caught its significance, but a guest described the ceremony as being performed under a nice floral yoke.  Flowers are the rule at all swell weddings, and in fragrance and beauty the new life should always be begun.  A lady determined to be unique, if anything, in her wedding appointments.  She was a mass of pearls - pearls edged top, bottom, and sides of her frock; sprays of pearls and flowers confined her veil; and a few clusters of the same, with a gathered flounce of point lace around them, she carried in her hand as a bridal bouquet.  It was stiff and theatrical-looking.  Her dear old mother came in behind her with a mass of white lilac in the folds of her lace handkerchief that crossed her bosom, and a huge bouquet of the fragrant blossoms in her white-gloved hands.  She looked more like a bride, with all these flowers and a silver silk grey gown, than did her stately daughter, and the clergyman looked so often at her that it is dollars to doughnuts he married ma to the man instead of Mary Ann.                            Chicago Ledger

 

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            Velvet-edged ribbons are among the novelties.  The middle of the ribbon is Ottoman repped silk, and the velvet forms a roll like a cord on each edge.  Gilt-edged, plain, gros grain ribbons are also very stylish, especially black ribbons with a gold cord on each edge, and also white with gold edges.  The newest watered ribbons for bonnet trimmings are wide, with a stripe of satin near one edge; this is used in black on bonnets of any stylish color.

 

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            Velvet-figured Spanish lace is one of the novelties of the season, not only in trimming widths, but in yard-wide pieces for parts of skirts of dresses of velvet, or moire, or Bengaline.  The velvet figures are in large rose designs, and have the effect of brocaded velvet.

 

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            India cashmere and other woolens that under new names closely resemble camel’s hair and etamine are used by French modistes in combination with soft silks that have stripes of plush or velvet, or else with heavy but pliable surahs that are plaited in dull, old-fashioned colors.

 

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            Black faille franchise is a very fashionable silk.  Many of the newly imported costumes are made wholly of it in the severe, elegant style now popular abroad.  Others are garnitured with jet appliqué bands and ornaments of the most sumptuous description.

 

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            Louis XIV draperies, quaintly shaped sleeves, bodices in Josephine and Marie Stuart styles, and peasant waists, with glimpses of contrasting color and material, are among the picturesque French features of new gowns.