“It is man’s place to rule and a woman’s to yield. He must be held up as the head of the house and it is her duty to bend so unmurmuring to his wishes that the rest of the household will follow her example and treat him with the due respect his sex demands” – Mrs Ann Sewell: Women and The Times We Live In (1869)
“The best way to get most husbands-to-be to do something is to suggest that perhaps they’re too hopeless to do it” – Ann Bancroft
“The bride, as she gets ready on her wedding day, usually feels in the position of a shivering stage neophyte, waiting in the wings of the draughty theatre of life, waiting for her cue…” – Mrs E Cook, The Bride’s Book (1901)
“The mother-in-law should break a cake or loaf of bread over the bride’s head as she first enters the door of her new home. This will establish friendly relations and make both happy.” – from The Folklore of Weddings, 1970 – because apparently having breadcrumbs tossed in your face is more welcoming than a banner and a hug…
“There’s nothing that maddens a woman more than her fiancé’s best friend: he knows all the secrets she’s going to spend the rest of her life trying to find out.” – Anon.
“Marriage is the result of of the longing for the deep deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue.” – Mrs Patrick Campbell
"The yacht never made it far enough into international waters to make it legal..."
- Zsa Zsa Gabor on the pleasures of her first married night with Felipe de Alba. She got married on April 13th 1983 - and left him on April 14th 1983.
"I've only slept with the men I've been married to," said Elizabeth Taylor to a journalist, which is quite some claim... She has been married to seven men (famously, to Richard Burton twice) and is recently rumoured to have become engaged to her eighth...