This week, I surprised a customer by embroidering a tiny pair of handcuffs in the pocket of the bridal jumpsuit I’m making for her. There was a precedent to this; it was a bit of an in-joke following several inappropriate giggles during fittings with her and her fiancée. Also, I stitched it so it was easy to remove if I really had misread the room.
Wives, in Spanish.
Fortunately, not only did she like it, it was even more appropriate than I’d imaged. The bride is a native Spanish speaker and told me that the word for handcuffs in Spanish – esposas – also means wives.
This naturally tickled my etymological tastebuds and it turns out both words stem from the Latin spondere, meaning to bind, so it’s not hard to see how each word evolved.
Not too dissimilar from the (usually sexist) English expression ‘ball and chain’.
But let’s not forget that husband shares its Old English roots with bondage.
What I’m really thinking when I say brides,bridalwear etc
My blog post that’s currently blowing up (for me; everything’s relative) about making wedding dresses for people of all genders and sexes included this side note about the term ‘bridalwear’:
I use the term bridalwear as loosely as possible because not all of my customers identify as brides. I try to use more inclusive terms where I can. I specialise in dresses and the traditionally more feminine styles of weddingwear such as dresses, veils, jumpsuits and separates rather than men’s suiting and tailoring and I’m still answerable to the SEO gods – I need people to find me! As language, attitudes and social mores evolve, this will change of course. In the meantime, I’m always happy to learn and stand corrected if I’m saying or doing something deplorable.
I want to elaborate. I almost always do.
It’s a topic very close to my heart, my family and my English Language degree.
I can’t do away with the term. At least not yet.
Many of my customers not only identify as a bride but embrace the (hopefully) once in a lifetime opportunity to be The Bride. I don’t want to deny them that.
When I know someone is happy to be called a bride, I will use the term for that individual in my conversations with them and in describing them publicly.
Others don’t. I equally don’t want to force an erroneous identity on them or make them feel excluded or othered. I always endeavour to check. Some prefer marrier, partner, or something else.
When I’m talking generally about unknown individuals, I use inclusive, gender-neutral language such as couples, spouse, nearly-weds or customers.
I completed an LBGTQ Awareness Course four years ago with the sadly now defunct Wedding Business School a few years back.
I’d hoped to revisit it for this post but will have to rely on my memory. Quite rightly, it advocated gender-neutral terms.
But I’m finding it tricky to describe what I do, and who I do it for, without saying bridal or bridalwear.
I could – and do – say I make wedding dresses, but I don’t just make those; I make veils, jumpsuits, playsuits and separates including trousers, skirts, capes and overskirts too. My very first foray into creating wedding outfits was inspired by the bow-ties and masculine tailoring of Marlene Dietrich in the film Morocco.
Credits below*
And I love throwing androgynous flamboyance into the mix, like I did when I created the Skye shirt-cape:
But if I say I make wedding outfits or weddingwear, that feels like it covers more than I actually do, because I don’t make traditional menswear like tailcoats, shirts, waistcoats and morning suits.
So I don’t want to waste anyone’s time by contacting me about making them something I don’t make.
And I do want to stay visible in search results when people look for “bridalwear near me”. Don’t even get me started on hashtags. I have to use the hashtags that people looking for the kind of things I make use so they can find me.
How about emojis? Decorative, convenient shorthand, especially where there are character limits. When there are gender neutral options, I use those. If I can use female, male and non-binary together, so much the better.
My Instagram highlight of real customers
For example, on my Instagram, I have a highlight featuring my customers in my creations on their wedding days. Originally I called it Real Brides, which was the maximum character limit that would stay visible on my profile. When I realised this was not only not inclusive but also inaccurate, I changed it to Real Customers, but only Real Custom remained visible and just looked odd. Similarly, Real Weddings became Real Weddin.
Emojis to the rescue. Then I had to pick which skin colours to include (and exclude). ARGH!
Ultimately, I have carved a career out of celebrating individuality. That’s what bespoke is.
So whoever you are and however you identify, please know that I see you, I love you and I’m just waiting for the language and SEO gods to catch up.
*Venue: @weddings_the_boat_shed_salt Photography: @photosbypaloma Bridalwear: me! @hollywintercouture Model: @gabbywaite97 Flowers: @lilybee822 Jeweller: @bishboshbecca Headpieces: @peacock_and_pearl Shoes: @irregularchoice Hair and make-up: @tonisearlemua Cakes: @annalewiscakes Mobile bar: @effervescerefreshments
Veil comes via French from the Latin velum, meaning a sail, covering or curtain. In the bridal sense, it originates from an Old French term for the head-covering worn by nuns.
I wonder if there was an association there with (assumed) virginity but I can’t find any evidence to confirm or quash that.
Shutterstock
The reason brides started wearing veils was to protect them from the evil spirits lurking around churchyards on the hunt for a virgin (and it is a truth universally acknowledged that all brides are virgins). The veil would supposedly conceal her from such paranormal perverts.
Incidentally, that’s also why her bridesmaids dressed the same – and traditionally, the bride would wear the same as them too; the evil spirits would be too confused about which was the real bride to take a victim.
If evil spirits are really that easily bamboozled, it’s a wonder that they were ever considered a threat at all. And weren’t bridesmaids usually also unmarried? And therefore also (obviously) virgins?
Imagine the spooks having to explain that one to the boss.
Satan: I sent you up there to abduct a virgin bride. Where is she?
Evil spirit: Er, well, I was confused. There were seven of them.
Satan: Seven?
Evil spirit: Yeah, they must have cloned her! They had the same colour dress and the same flimsy white tulle over their faces. How was I supposed to know which one was the bride?
Satan: If they cloned her, they were all virgins! Just take any one of them!
Evil spirit: Well maybe they weren’t clones exactly. Maybe they were just her unmarried sisters and friends. Cousins even.
Satan:
Evil spirit:
Ah well, there goes religion. I’m grateful that the aesthetic need for veils has endured to keep me in work.
I didn’t attend many weddings when I lived in Japan 20-odd years ago and only found out today that the traditional Japanese bridal head-dress, tsunokakushi (角隠し), literally means HORN CONCEALER!
It was/is believed to hide the bride’s “horns” of jealousy, ego and selfishness, and is a sign of her commitment to be a gentle and obedient wife.
Beware what lies beneath the tsunokakushi. Photo: M’s One via Wedded Wonderland
With the gorgeously ornate tsunokakushi worn by brides now, I imagine (read hope) that the origins of the tradition are somewhat lost, and wearing one is now more an aesthetic decision, much like the western wedding veil. But that’s for another blog post.
Either way, take this as another reminder that the world is full of wedding traditions and you only have to follow the ones that work for you. Traditions are just peer pressure from dead people.
Photo from M’s One beauty salon (coincidentally in Gifu, my nearest city when I lived in Japan) via Wedded Wonderland 😈
Are you a betting person? Fond of a flutter? Paying wages? Planning a wedding is closer to all of these than you might have ever thought.
You feeling lucky, punk?
The word ‘wedding’ comes from the Old English ‘weddian’, which meant to covenant, engage or pledge. Germanic linguistic history gives us loads of similar words meaning pledge, such as ‘weddia’ in Old Frisian, ‘wedden’ in Low Middle German and Middle and modern Dutch and ‘vedhja’ in Old Icelandic. Gothic also had ‘gawadjōn’ which actually meant to marry or espouse.
So it’s no great leap to see the connection to Modern German’s ‘wetten’, which means to wager or bet, as well as pledge. When you think about betting, what you’re actually doing is promising to pay if you’re wrong. Indeed, Old English ‘wedd’ meant being pawned or mortgaged.
Our Modern English word ‘wages’ also has the same linguistic root, wages also being a promise or pledge, i.e. of a reward for completed work.The germanic languages seem to agree; Middle and Modern Dutch ‘wedde’ means wages.
The Latinate side of English’s origins cognates with the germanic too. Latin’s ‘vas’ (genitive ‘vadis’) and Lithuanian’s ‘vādas’ meant surety or bail.
Finally, ‘wedlock’ doesn’t actually have anything to do with locks. It is simply Old English ‘wedd’ (pledge) plus the suffix ‘lac’ which signified a noun. The suffix changed to ‘lock’ by folk etymology, through association with the similar sounding ‘lock’.
Not in an epically understated way, like my gracious German cousins last week ⚽️🎉.
More like when I go out for Chinese food and the main course never seems to live up to splendiferous platter of prawn toasts, satay chicken sticks, spring rolls and duck pancakes we had for the starter.
I blame husband. Not my husband, nor anyone else’s, but the word ‘husband’ itself. Specifically, its etymology. Because after I learned that it shares its origin with 007 and bondage for my last blog post, I had high hopes for its feminine counterpart.
Disappointment (1882), by Julius Leblanc Stewart. I don’t know what he did either.
Alas, ‘wife’ began its recorded life as Old English wif, meaning… wife.
However, ‘wif’ could also mean woman, irrespective of marital status. So I researched ‘woman’. And here I found my nugget of geek gold.
An anomalous quirk of English language evolution is that the word ‘wife’, i.e. a woman as a man’s possession (the predominant mentality of the time), predates ‘woman’ as a female person generally.
Disappointed AND retroactively outraged.
So I embroidered the shit out of a veil and felt much better.
Matron. Matriarch. Maternity. Matricide. All share a common root: the Latin ‘mater’, meaning mother. So why does ‘matrimony’ derive from the same?
Hatty Jacques’s Matron from the Carry On… films
As with many marriage traditions, the answer is in its patriarchal origins. Marriage was seen as literally the act of establishing a mother in the household.
Clearly this is problematic. It is male-centric, where the man is the active participant bringing the passive woman/mother figure into his domicile. It is hetero/cis-normative. It also assumes that every woman getting married wants to, and will, become a mother, not to mention that this is the primary purpose of marriage.
So, does this mean that technically only hetero/cis couples planning children can be joined in matrimony? Of course not. It’s not the 1300s, from when ‘matrimony’ was first recorded, spelled ‘matrymony’ at the time. Language evolves. Spellings and semantics change. Mercifully, so do (some) patriarchal social norms.
Remember that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Carrie asks Charles why he thinks it’s called a honeymoon? Charles suggests that it’s honey because it’s as sweet as honey and moon because it’s the first time a husband gets to see his wife’s bottom. Well, wouldn’t you just know it? He’s actually (partially) right. Just not about the butt cheeks.
I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon.
It is indeed honey because it’s something sweet. BUT (not butt) it’s actually meant ironically, to describe something that seems wonderful now but won’t last, hence when people talk about the ‘honeymoon period’ of a project or endeavour, etc, with the implicit expectation of it all going to shit.
This is because of the nature of the phases of the moon: it is no sooner full than it begins to wane. So, ‘honeymoon’ is a rather cynical remark on the newlyweds’ long-term prospects for happiness.
Perhaps the last laugh is on the cynics though; they seem to have forgotten that even when the moon disappears entirely, it will start to wax once more and reach its full glory again (and again, and again) soon enough. That sounds sweet enough to me. Peachy even.
I’m never one to kink shame but I have to admit I nearly spat my tea when I was researching this one; under ‘husband’ in my etymological dictionary was the instruction to, “See ‘Bondage'”.
Another surprise on this etymological adventure was that it would lead me to 007 himself.
‘Husband’ is a compound of two words: ‘house’ and ‘bond’ (not ‘band’). Old English (about 800 years ago) combined ‘hus’ meaning ‘house’ and ‘bonda’ meaning ‘hold’ into ‘husbonda’, which meant householder, lord of the house, house owner. Before this, it probably came from something scandiwegian as Old Icelandic has the very similar ‘hūsbondi’.
But get this. The ‘bond’ bit originally meant tennant (ie not land owning) farmer, or serf. When you think about the modern meanings of bond, it starts to make sense. Tie, fetter, bind, hold, commit. These folk would hold their land temporarily rather than own it. You can also see how ‘bond’ became ‘bondage’ as in enslave or servitude.
It’s also probably the source of the surname Bond. The original Bonds were unlikely to be driving an Aston Martin. 007 has come a long way.
