In July this year, the Church of England unveiled a two-for-one wedding and baptism liturgy in a bid to encourage co-habiting parents to marry and then christen their children after the wedding ceremony. The “hatch and match” service is just the latest effort by the Church to become “more relevant to the way modern people live their lives”… we suppose it’s better than getting hitched by twinned Nintendo DS or relegating weddings to the ‘Entertainment and CDs’ aisle of Tesco…

Instead of a receiving line, the tradition at French royal weddings, like that of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, was for the bridal couple to sit and play a particular game of cards, as their subjects filed past to get a better look.

UNLIKELY BRIDAL SONGS from ‘Wedding Music: an Index to Collections’ by William Goodfellow
• Adios Muchachos
• Come All Ye Weary, Cease From Your Sighing
• Day In, Day Out, The Same Old Hoo-Doo
• Don’t Look So Sad, I Know It’s Over
• Hello, I Don’t Even Know Your Name
• How Can I Just Let You Walk Away?
• Kissing You Was Not What I Had Planned
• Little Boy Lost in Search Of Little Boy Found
• Look At This Face, I Know The Years Are Showing
• Sometimes, Not Often Enough
• Through His Bleeding Side Retreating (Stabat Mater)
• Two Broken Hearts, Neither Knows What To Say
• When You’re Down and Troubled

When setting the month of the wedding, there are inevitably whirling clouds of superstition – but May cops most of the flak and has done right back into Roman times, when May was the month they held feasts to appease the spirits of the dead, during which time women were forbidden to wear cosmetics or take a bath. Beauty considerations aside, May was also sandwiched between goddess of love Venus’s April and goddess of marriage Juno’s June, so marrying then was thought to slight both primadonna goddesses. Ovid declared, “tis unlucky to marry in the month of May”, later taken up as a proverb: “Marry in May, repent alway”.