In the antebellum era, marriage was common and typically arranged and followed a customary ceremony and party. Teen men and women went through courtship to find their future husband or wife, this “allowed young men and women to meet and socialize largely unchaperoned, at a variety of entertainments” (Maurer). Men started this process in their late teens and married in their mid to early twenties. Men were set on marrying early after they finished their education in order to reap the benefits of women helping out on the plantation and supporting a man’s economic efforts. While looking for a plantation women, men searched for a hard-working, obeying and etiquette women to run the plantation. Women, on the contrary, used this time as their one
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Women during this time did not have to care for children, cook for the family, do household chores, or tend to the sick. They praised this time and held back on marriage even though they started the courtship process early around sixteen or seventeen years old. Occasionally, women would marry early if their father had matched them early, or their father and the daughter wanted a variety of men to choose from. Once a couple decided to marry in their late teens or early twenties, the couple verbally invited family and friends to attend a typical November, December, or January wedding sometimes located in a church. Similar to a traditional twenty-first-century wedding, in the 1800s, “Wedding festivities often began with eating, drinking, and toasting, continued with games and dancing, and ended with the couple’s exit from the bride’s house” (Maurer). Yet on the contrary, in the antebellum era, a wedding ceremony began with the bride and groom walking down an aisle followed immediately by their parents, the bridesmaids, and groomsmen. After the vows were exchanged and the ceremony was finished the attendants continued the celebration at the bride’s parent’s house. All me raced back to the house and the first male there received a bottle of alcohol as his
Women during this time did not have to care for children, cook for the family, do household chores, or tend to the sick. They praised this time and held back on marriage even though they started the courtship process early around sixteen or seventeen years old. Occasionally, women would marry early if their father had matched them early, or their father and the daughter wanted a variety of men to choose from. Once a couple decided to marry in their late teens or early twenties, the couple verbally invited family and friends to attend a typical November, December, or January wedding sometimes located in a church. Similar to a traditional twenty-first-century wedding, in the 1800s, “Wedding festivities often began with eating, drinking, and toasting, continued with games and dancing, and ended with the couple’s exit from the bride’s house” (Maurer). Yet on the contrary, in the antebellum era, a wedding ceremony began with the bride and groom walking down an aisle followed immediately by their parents, the bridesmaids, and groomsmen. After the vows were exchanged and the ceremony was finished the attendants continued the celebration at the bride’s parent’s house. All me raced back to the house and the first male there received a bottle of alcohol as his