From the late Middle Ages to "The Marriage of Figaro" to Mel Gibson's "Braveheart," the ultimate symbol of feudal barbarism has been the "droit de cuissage," or right of a feudal lord to sleep with the bride of a vassal on her wedding night. The "droit de cuissage" even resurfaced in the debate over the French Penal Code of 1992 as a synonym for sexual harassment.
But, as Alain Boureau elegantly demonstrates in this book, the "droit de cuissage" is a myth. Under contextual examination, nearly all the supposed evidence for this custom melts away--yet belief in it has survived for seven hundred years. Boureau shows how each era turned the mythical custom to its own ends. For instance, in the late Middle Ages, monarchists raised the specter of the "droit de cuissage" to rally public opinion against local lords, and partisans of the French Revolution pointed to it as proof of the corruption of the Ancien Regime.
A fascinating case study of the folklore of sexuality, "The Lord's First Night" also offers evocative insights into popular (mis)conceptions of the Middle Ages.
On the French edition: "A richly informative study of attitudes to the past and the manipulation of history down the ages."--Peter Linehan, "Times Literary Supplement"

How to face the big occasion with confidence and carry it off with style. So you will be 'saying a few words' on the Big Day. The problem is, we don't get much practice, do we? That's why this practical book will prove so useful to you. Whether you are the best man, the bridegroom, the father of the bride, or other speaker, you will find all the tips and advice you need to prepare and deliver a brilliant, unique and memorable speech that even the most seasoned public speaker would be proud of! Now in its fully revised and updated 7th edition. Contents: Preface; 1. Etiquette and all that; 2. Preparing a great speech; 3. Getting mentally prepared; 4. Rehearsing and delivering your speech; 5. Making the father of the bride's speech; 6. Making the bridegroom's speech; 7. Making the best man's speech; 8. Other speeches; Resources; Index.

By growing your own wedding flowers you can add a personal element to your special occasion, while caring for the environment and saving money at the same time. Filled with gorgeous pictures, this friendly, no-nonsense book makes growing and arranging your own flowers achievable and fun. Whether you're growing for a wedding or for a birthday, festival or other celebration, Georgie's cheerful advice takes you through everything you need to know. Step-by-step guides cover: Planning, growing, cutting and conditioning your flowers Spring, summer, autumn and winter weddings Flower craft for special occasions, including buttonholes, bouquets, centrepieces, garlands and flower crowns. From jam-jar posies to elaborate displays, Grow Your Own Wedding Flowers explains how to grow and create beautiful arrangements and make your special day unique, without costing the earth.

This is the perfect present for a bride-to-be. Getting engaged is a cause for celebration, but with it comes the exciting, and daunting task of planning the wedding day, as well as preparing yourself for marriage! The Wedding Pocket Bible gives you all the essential advice and information you'll need, including the traditions and wedding etiquette; from invitations and table plans to bridesmaids', best man, mother-of-the-bride and the groom's duties. We also bring you bridal tips and advice to help you enjoy planning the big day. We've covered everything you might possibly need to know, in this beautifully packaged gift book, including: weddings on a budget, choosing the right venue for you, personalising your wedding, planning your stag and hen dos, choosing your cake, flowers, music, photographer, and of course, the important dress. Above all, this book will make sure you and your future husband have the wedding you want, and will remember forever. This beautiful hardback edition has both dust-cover and gold embossing on the spine making it the perfect gift. Every Pocket Bible is lovingly crafted to give you a unique mix of useful references, handy tips and fascinating trivia that will enlighten and entertain you at every page. There is a Pocket Bible for everyone... Other titles in the series: The Pregnancy Pocket Bible, The Mum's Pocket Bible, The Dog Lover's Pocket Bible, The Jane Austen Pocket Bible and The Baking Pocket Bible.

You have a wonderful opportunity to add to the magic of your daughter's wedding. Your words will linger in memories -- they may even be captured on video for future generations to hear. So what are the golden rules of speech making? How can you convey emotion, seriousness, and add a touch of humour? Should you offer advice to the happy couple, and what about the toast? The answers are all here in this vital book. Use it to add something special to an already special day.

Named "Best of the Best from the University Presses" for 2007 by the American Library AssociationWeddings today are a $70-billion business, yet no one has explained how the industry has become such a significant component of the American economy. In "Brides, Inc.," Vicki Howard goes behind the scenes of the various firms involved--from jewelers to caterers--to explore the origins of the lavish American wedding, demonstrating the important role commercial interests have played in shaping traditions most of us take for granted.Howard reveals how many of our customs and wedding rituals were the product of sophisticated advertising campaigns, merchandising promotions, and entrepreneurial innovations. Tracing the rise of the wedding industry from the 1920s through the 1950s, the author explains that retailers, bridal consultants, etiquette writers, caterers, and many others invented traditions--from the diamond engagement ring and double-ring ceremony to the gift registry to the package-deal catered affair. These businesses and entrepreneurs, many of them women, transformed wedding culture and set the stage for today's multibillion-dollar industry.The wedding industry began to take shape between the 1920s and the 1950s. Bridal magazine editors and etiquette writers, jewelers, department store window display artists, bridal consultants, fashion designers, and caterers invented new consumer rites and promoted higher standards of wedding consumption. Claiming ties with "ancient customs" and various historical periods, the wedding industry promoted new goods and services as timeless and unchanging. It introduced new ring customs and wedding apparel fashions, and "modern" services, such as gift registries that rationalized gift customs, bridal salons that saved time and made wedding planning more efficient, and wedding packages that standardized ceremonies and reception celebrations.During World War II, the traditional white wedding grew even more prevalent as jewelers and bridal gown manufacturers successfully sought exemptions from wartime restrictions, linking the diamond engagement ring, the double-ring ceremony, and the formal white wedding gown with democracy and American prosperity. By the 1950s, the wedding industry had made the formal white wedding tradition a part of a new cult of marriage and the modern American Dream.Entertaining and informative, "Brides, Inc." reveals the origins and development of this most exemplary American enterprise and brings the story up to the present with a discussion of such new phenomena as David's Bridal and the gay wedding industry.

Feuding in-laws manipulative wedding planners rehearsal dinner meltdownsthere's no end to the ways a wedding can go wrong. But have no fear: The Bride's Instruction Manual covers all the topics you need to know to march down the aisle with confidence.
In a concise and irreverent approach noted wedding expert Carrie Denny offers advice for setting the date choosing the dress selecting attendants deciding on a wedding site drafting a guest list designing invitations and more. And it's all illustrated in the trademark "techy" style that has helped Quirk Owners and Instruction Manuals sell more than one million copies around the world.
Complete with tons of useful information (and chock-full of cheat sheets to keep you on track and on budget) The Bride's Instruction Manual is the perfect shower gift for every blushing bride-to-be.

The stories collected here--including such gems as Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," O. Henry's "The Marry Month of May," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Bridal Party," Joy Williams's "The Wedding," and Lorrie Moore's "Thank You For Having Me", encompass comic wedding mishaps, engagements broken and mended, honeymoon adventures, and scenes both heartwarming and heartbreaking. There are glamorous weddings in Paris and New York, and more eccentric ones in the Wild West and on a remote island beach. There are nervous brides, forgetful grooms, meddling guests, interrupted nuptials, second thoughts, and second chances. Above all, there are all kinds of people - young and old, rich and poor, divorced and widowed, with or without children - joining together in the age-old quest for matrimonial happiness.

For brides and grooms who want to give their weddings new depth and meaning, two acclaimed poet-translators have gathered a stunning collection of poems and prose that will add a unique and personal dimension to the ceremony.

The trend towards a more secular culture in Western society means that there can be greater flexibility in a wedding ceremony, but couples are often faced with the challenge of preparing a meaningful celebration outside the traditional religious framework. This hands-on, practical guide demonstrates how to approach and prepare a secular wedding ceremony that honours a couple's relationship with honest vows and rituals true to their shared values. In addition, it provides guidance on structuring a ceremony for couples that come from very different cultural or spiritual backgrounds. Includes the tools necessary for the creation of a ceremony, such as a Ritual Identity Questionnaire, checklists, and many other resources.

Discover the truth about weddings with this fun, witty, self-help book for brides-to-be. A Modern Girl's Guide to Getting Hitched gives tips, guidance and case studies on how to plan for your big day, cope with your families and friends, and achieve your own goals. Entertaining and informative, it tells the truth about weddings that the magazines don't dare to mention. Topics covered include: *Coming to terms with never being able to pull men again! *Dealing with the details that will drive you mad - and discovering the available options *Looking like a princess - without having to behave like one *Creating the right service for you *Speeches - choosing the right people for the job and controlling their content *Choosing a bridesmaid without losing all your female friends *Learning how to balance being a wedding bore with a full-time job *Judgement Day - including common disasters and last minute fixes. A Modern Girl's Guide to Getting Hitched is a must-have, light-hearted guide to one of the most unintentionally stressful days of a woman's life.

The book unpacks every element of a wedding - stationery, attire, seating plans, flowers and tablescapes, food and drink, gifts - with examples that will appeal to couples who care about how things are made but are not overly influenced by trends. The emphasis is on natural surroundings, seasonal flowers and food, modern dresses, minimalist ceremony structures, and naked cakes. Photographs of real weddings - "case studies" like a destination fete in Tuscany, a house party in Brooklyn, and a New Agey revel in Kauai - show how all the pieces can come together into a unique and expressive whole. Extensive practical information and resources give readers access to all the help they need for their own unique celebration.

The definitive guide to planning your perfect wedding day, from the UK's most-loved, and multi-award-winning wedding website and podcast - Rock My Wedding. With friendly advice, tips, ideas and stunning photography, it's the perfect pre-wedding purchase for any couple! 'The UK's most influential brand in the wedding industry'- Conclusion from an independent study carried out by Universal McCann, one of the world's leading ad networks. 'Absolutely brimming with wedding inspiration' -- ***** Reader review 'Every fiance/fiancee needs this masterpiece' -- ***** Reader review 'Beautiful and inspiring' -- ***** Reader review 'Full of inspiration - this book is one every fiance/fiancee should own to help them create their perfect wedding day' -- ***** Reader review ****************************************************************************************************** Just like you, your wedding day will be personal, one-of-a-kind, and completely unique. We're not here to tell you what you should do to make your day perfect, only that you can do it. Covering floral decor, table plans, lighting, photography, venues, outfits, food - as well as much more - this is your one-stop-shop to planning the perfect wedding for YOU. With advice and guidance on the individual aspects to consider when planning your wedding day - from where to begin and recommended questions to ask your suppliers, to plenty of alternative decor ideas - we hope that you'll find inspiration, reassurance and a little bit of escapism in these pages as you embark on planning one of the most special and joyful days of your lives.

For Prespa Albanians, both at home in Macedonia and in the diaspora, the most opulent, extravagant, and socially significant events of any year are wedding ceremonies. During days and weeks of festivities, wedding celebrants interact largely through singing, defining and renegotiating as they do so the very structure of their social world and establishing a profound cultural touchstone for Prespa communities around the world.
Combining photographs, song texts, and vibrant recordings of the music with her own evocative descriptions, ethnomusicologist Jane C. Sugarman focuses her account of Prespa weddings on notions of gendered identity, demonstrating the capacity of singing to generate and transform relations of power within Prespa society. "Engendering Song" is an innovative theoretical work, with a scholarly importance extending far beyond southeast European studies. It offers unique and timely contributions to the analysis of music and gender, music in diaspora cultures, and the social constitution of self and subjectivity.

How to make a great, best man's speech - and a guide to being a great best man. In this book Phillip Khan-Panni uses his expertise as a champion professional speaker to help the best man with the terrifying prospect of writing and delivering The Speech. He guides you on the vital preparation of your speech and tells you how to use stories, jokes and quotations that will lift it well above the bare necessities. With the author`s help and his professional tips and techniques, you will be able to make a really entertaining and moving speech that will be remembered for a long time to come. You might even enjoy making it as much as the guests do hearing it! There are also checklists and further advice to help you organise the whole occasion so that the big day honours the groom and his bride and thoroughly impresses their friends and relations

The last thing on Lizzie's mind is catching the bouquet When her best friend's wedding venue catches fire, Lizzie Martin is on the case to find somewhere new. By some miracle, a space opens up at Halesmere House, and it makes perfect sense to move the event to the Lake District artists' residence. But Lizzie has painful memories of Halesmere... And when she bumps into Cal, her first love, she is forced to confront the past. Now a sought-after blacksmith, Cal has his own studio at Halesmere and the two must find a way to get along if this wedding isn't going to be a complete disaster. It soon becomes apparent that their attraction hasn't waned, but can Lizzie put their shared past behind her and learn to trust the man who left her once before? An emotional and heartwarming romance for fans of Phillipa Ashley, Heidi Swain and Sue Moorcroft.