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#Post#: 37146--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: Aleko Date: August 21, 2019, 12:27 pm
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[quote]I don't see how having 20 of maybe 100 guests is having a
A and B class guests especially since the events are far apart
in timing.[/quote]
But they weren't far apart in timing! The canape reception
lasted till 6 pm when the bride and groom 'went away', to
signify that the reception was over. Here in the UK you'd
normally sit down to a festive dinner, or any restaurant dinner,
anywhere between 7 or 8, so they must have headed pretty much
directly to their restaurant with their 'real' friends, leaving
the B-listers to collect their coats and start on their homeward
journeys at much about the time that they would normally have
been expecting to be ushered into the wedding dinner.
[quote]It's like having the rehearsal dinner with just family
and close friends the night before or having a morning after
brunch with just a few friends and close family. Usually not
everyone invited to the wedding is invited to those in my area.
[/quote]
No, it absolutely isn't. Those are separate events, which would
require anybody coming any kind of distance to take days off
work and stay in a hotel or find relatives to put them up for at
least two days. .
Actually we don't normally have rehearsal dinners over here,
because we don't have rehearsals, or at any rate never used to.
What's to rehearse? It isn't a play. (I read a Regency romance a
while ago and when the American author had dramatic events occur
when the groom and his family 'arrived for the rehearsal
dinner', imagining the amazement and distaste that Regency
gentlefolk would have felt at the notion of rehearsing a wedding
practically made me snort my biscuit through my nose with
laughter.) But if any of my friends or family ever had to have
any such thing, which none of them have, nobody other than the
people who had been required for the rehearsal - i.e. the
members of the wedding party - would expect to be part of it.
#Post#: 37156--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: JeanFromBNA Date: August 21, 2019, 1:56 pm
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Wasn't there a wedding rehearsal on Downton Abbey?
#Post#: 37160--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: Aleko Date: August 21, 2019, 2:49 pm
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[quote]Wasn't there a wedding rehearsal on Downton
Abbey?[/quote]
Don't ask me; I gave up on DA after Season 2 when the
character-implausibility and social and historical inaccuracies
got too much to bear. For a diplomat's son and the husband of an
earl's niece, Julian Fellowes either doesn't seem to know very
much about aristocratic life, or he's just made up him mind to
write whatever guff will pass for the international market.
But a wedding rehearsal at Downton just makes no sense. For one,
there was no 'making it personal' in weddings then; you just all
went up to the church and walked up to the altar, the service
took place exactly as it had done ever since the prayer book was
published in 1662, then you walked back out again. Everybody had
seen it dozens of times and knew exactly what to do. For
another, it wasn't a show! None of the wedding party or the
guests expected it to be slick as a stage number; a bit of
shuffling around and mumbling wasn't an issue. The notion of
being rehearsed for a wedding - just like actors or music hall
artistes!!! - would have been unthinkably insulting.
Edited to add: if anybody knows which episode that was and where
to find it on Youtube, I'd be interested to watch it. I honestly
can't imagine what the scriptwriters could have dreamed up for
the family to rehearse, given that they had been getting married
in exactly the same way in the same church for generations.
#Post#: 37185--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: lakey Date: August 21, 2019, 9:09 pm
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[quote]Actually we don't normally have rehearsal dinners over
here, because we don't have rehearsals, or at any rate never
used to. What's to rehearse? It isn't a play. (I read a Regency
romance a while ago and when the American author had dramatic
events occur when the groom and his family 'arrived for the
rehearsal dinner', imagining the amazement and distaste that
Regency gentlefolk would have felt at the notion of rehearsing a
wedding practically made me snort my biscuit through my nose
with laughter.) But if any of my friends or family ever had to
have any such thing, which none of them have, nobody other than
the people who had been required for the rehearsal - i.e. the
members of the wedding party - would expect to be part of
it.[/quote]
Just an explanation of the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, in my
area of the U.S.
The parents of the bride and groom and the wedding party would
meet at the church, usually late afternoon. The priest did a run
through of mother of bride, and groom's parents being escorted
down the aisle to their pews. Then the wedding party practiced
processing down the aisle to their pews. Then the priest went
over the procedure for the couple to come up for their vows,
when to come up, where to stand, etc.
When this was over, the people involved went to a restaurant for
the rehearsal dinner. At most it was usually the wedding party,
parents of the couple, siblings of the couple, and occasionally
grandparents. The original purpose of it was for the people at
the rehearsal to enjoy a meal together after the rehearsal.
Like many aspects of weddings, the rehearsal dinner has, in some
areas, become a much larger occasion than it used to be.
#Post#: 37190--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: NyaChan Date: August 21, 2019, 11:06 pm
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The rehearsal I participated in was less than 10 minutes. It
basically just made sure that people knew where they would need
to be and when which was especially helpful as this was a
catholic wedding and not all of the wedding party (including me)
were catholic. I felt better knowing what would happen so I
wouldn’t accidentally mess up the ceremony.
#Post#: 37262--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: JeanFromBNA Date: August 22, 2019, 3:26 pm
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[quote author=Aleko link=topic=1288.msg37160#msg37160
date=1566416940]
[quote]Wasn't there a wedding rehearsal on Downton
Abbey?[/quote]
Don't ask me; I gave up on DA after Season 2 when the
character-implausibility and social and historical inaccuracies
got too much to bear. For a diplomat's son and the husband of an
earl's niece, Julian Fellowes either doesn't seem to know very
much about aristocratic life, or he's just made up him mind to
write whatever guff will pass for the international market.
But a wedding rehearsal at Downton just makes no sense. For one,
there was no 'making it personal' in weddings then; you just all
went up to the church and walked up to the altar, the service
took place exactly as it had done ever since the prayer book was
published in 1662, then you walked back out again. Everybody had
seen it dozens of times and knew exactly what to do. For
another, it wasn't a show! None of the wedding party or the
guests expected it to be slick as a stage number; a bit of
shuffling around and mumbling wasn't an issue. The notion of
being rehearsed for a wedding - just like actors or music hall
artistes!!! - would have been unthinkably insulting.
Edited to add: if anybody knows which episode that was and where
to find it on Youtube, I'd be interested to watch it. I honestly
can't imagine what the scriptwriters could have dreamed up for
the family to rehearse, given that they had been getting married
in exactly the same way in the same church for generations.
[/quote]
A quick Google search didn't turn up anything. I'll have to
re-watch a couple of episodes to see if I can find it, or maybe
I've imagined it. In the meantime, if you don't think that it
derails from your thread too much, would you mind telling us
Leftpondians what made Downtown Abbey codswallop besides a
possibly-non-existent wedding rehearsal?
#Post#: 37470--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: Aleko Date: August 26, 2019, 2:42 am
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[quote] In the meantime, if you don't think that it derails from
your thread too much, would you mind telling us Leftpondians
what made Downtown Abbey codswallop besides a
possibly-non-existent wedding rehearsal?[/quote]
Hi Jeanfrom,
Sorry for the delay responding to you! I had to refresh my
memory banks, it being years since I stopped watching, and once
I started - well, brace yourself for a screed...
There was just a constant stream of macro- and micro-assaults on
historical accuracy. It started right from the beginning with
the whole Cora/Robert relationship. He is supposed to be crushed
with guilt about having married her for money: but (a) the
British aristocracy had been marrying for money for centuries,
and indeed would have thought it very selfish and irresponsible
not to; and (b) she had married him for social status, which he
and society at large would have seen as a very fair deal all
round. Also, that whole plot point about all her money having
gone straight into the Downton estate leaving her with nothing,
is pretty much impossible. No properly-drawn up marriage
settlement failed to settle a proportionate slice of money on
the bride personally, so that if her husband squandered the
dowry, or he threw her out of the house so he could live with
his mistress, or - as in this case - failed to sire an heir so
that after his death the estate went to a nephew or cousin, she
would be comfortably provided for. (At least one commentator on
Downton has described the series as one long whine by Fellowes
against the male inheritance of peerages, as without that that
his wife would be a Countess; and they had a point.)
The Downton household contains less than a quarter of the number
of servants it would in reality have had. In 1912 Highclere
Castle, the house where Downton was filmed, had 25 maids, 14
footmen and three male chefs! It's understandable that the
production cast reduced numbers, not only on the grounds of
expense but so there weren't too many below-stairs characters to
recognise and relate to; but it did mean that the whole servant
community was far more cosy and tight-knit - and far less
regimented and hierarchical - than it realistically would have
been. For example, the upper servants wouldn't even have sat
down to eat with the rest; they would have had their own meals
in the steward's or housekeeper's room and been waited on by
junior servants.
Relationships between the family and the servants were also far
closer and more casual than they would ever historically have
been. Yes, a very few servant roles (valet, lady's maid, nanny)
required intimacy with one of the family, and the senior
servants (butler, housekeeper) might - not necessarily would -
have been in the confidence of the master and / or mistress of
the house; but the family would barely have known the names of
most of the other servants, and might rarely have even seen many
of them. The scene where the Earl, interviewing his new
chauffeur Branson in the library, casually gives him permission
to borrow books, is beyond ridiculous. A room like the library
would have been totally off-limits to any servant who didn't
have a job to do there; no house-owner would have cheerily let
them browse and borrow books. (Heck, can you imagine any
present-day millionaire allowing that?)
But in fact the whole Branson story arc is consistently absurd.
He plans a criminal assault on a Downton dinner-guest, which is
known to Carson, but doesn't even get the sack; he claims to be
a socialist and Irish patriot but sits out the entire World War,
the Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence comfortably
as an imperialist lackey (literally) in Downton without lifting
a finger for it; then when he finally has to leave Downton on
account of having tried to elope with one of the Earl's
daughters (nothing less would have got him the sack) he swans
into a good job with a Dublin newspaper, well-paid enough to
allow him to support a wife, for which he can't possibly be in
any way qualified - if he has any experience at all in writing
or journalism it's at least seven years ago, and since then he
has been rusticating in the Yorkshire countryside, not seeing
anything at all of political life and events even in London, let
alone Ireland.
The characters' attitudes are resolutely modern. Girls who get
pregnant out of wedlock are sympathised with, not labelled as
sluts and turned out of the house. And while everyone except the
youngest and most naïve of the servants knows that Thomas the
footman is gay, nobody has a problem with this: they dislike him
because he's a slimeball, not because they honestly believe that
homosexuality is an abomination, "peccatum illud horribile,
inter Christianos non nominandum" ("that horrible crime not to
be named among Christians") as the majority of people at the
time - including genuinely nice, kind people - honestly did.
Indeed, the Earl not merely doesn't sack Thomas for making
sexual advances to a new footman; he puts pressure on the lad to
drop his (100% true) accusation of indecent assault, and
promotes Thomas to under-butler! No, no, no, that would not have
happened in period. Not unless the Earl himself was gay and
deliberately hiring gay servants (safer; they couldn't shop him
to the police or the press without outing themselves).
Clangers were constantly dropped in non-period language and
manners. E.g. the butler and footmen wear white-tie evening
dress during the day -and even out of doors! - rather than
their daytime livery: a big no-no.
Glaring anachronisms, e.g: Mrs Patmore the cook. (NB that having
a woman heading up the kitchen in an earl's household is itself
implausible; a house of that status would have at least one
male chef - as mentioned above, Highclere had three - paid a
whole lot more.) She is going blind with cataracts (medically
perfectly plausible); hides this because she dreads simply being
sacked if her employers find out and ending her days in the
workhouse (also perfectly plausible historically - many well-off
people did sack their servants when they became ill or disabled,
which should alert viewers to the untypical benevolence of the
Crawleys). When her problem is discovered Robert pays for an
operation for her (OK; it's untypical, but some employers were
that generous). She then comes back to Downton wearing a pair of
dinky dark glasses, sighted and able to work again, hooray! But
the specs simply disappear shortly after her return, implying
that she only needed them while she was recovering from the
operation, and for the rest of the series she apparently has
perfectly good sight. And that's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE! The
first cataract implant operation was in 1950 (and for decades
after that it was a big-deal, complex, very expensive procedure,
nothing like the outpatient deal it is now). Before that, all
surgeons could do was remove the clouded lens. Literally just
that. Without the lens, the eye couldn't focus and was
permanently very long-sighted, so the patient was equipped with
a pair of spectacles with lenses thick as jam-jar bottom, and
peered through these. It wasn't brilliant, just a lot better
than being blind.
And the issue of Robert - aged 48 at the outbreak of WWI - being
'too old to fight' and thus hanging resentfully around Downton
all through the war was ludicrous. The Army was desperate for
trained officers, especially ones with experience of active
service; men who had fought in the Boer War, as Robert had done,
were gratefully taken back on to the active list. He would have
been about the average age for a regimental commander; many
officers 10 or more years older than Robert commanded troops on
the Western Front. And of course it wasn't only front-line
officers that were needed; even men who really were no longer
young or fit enough for that were in demand as staff and
training officers (In fact, in real life there was a big
training camp for recruits at Catterick near Ripon, which it's
canon was the nearest serious-sized town to Downton. Robert was
perfectly qualified to command that, and could still have been
home to dinner every night.)
Fellowes also claimed that Robert was not called up because he
was a landowner. That's not merely not true but amounts to a
libel on the British aristocracy, who have always accepted that
their one absolute duty and raison d'etre, the basis of all
their privileges, is to fight for the monarch against his/her
enemies. In 1910 every peer had personally sworn an oath to King
George V at his coronation to do that very thing. And they did.
They went to fight en masse; by the end of 1915 nine peers and
ninety-five peers' sons had been killed in battle. In all, 24
peers were killed in action in the war.
Then there's the stupid bit where Robert is finally made Colonel
of the North Riding Volunteers*, expects to go to France in
command of them, and is utterly dashed to be told that it's only
an honorary post. But the full Colonelcy of a Territorial
regiment was, and is, always an honorary post! He's a local
landowner, who acts as patron of the regiment, lets it use his
estates for field exercises, gives dinners for the officers and
awards the prizes for the marksmanship competitions. Robert
could not possibly not have known that. (Indeed, it's a good
question why he hasn’t been its colonel ever since he retired
from active service; he's exactly the kind of person who would
be offered the post. He would certainly have known whoever was
Colonel, and known exactly what that entailed.) Also, as an
ex-soldier himself he could not possibly have been unaware that
for a honorary colonel to wear uniform other than on
specifically regimental occasions is very, very bad form, and
that he had no business whatsoever to be hanging around Downton
in khaki.
*Never mind that the Volunteers were a 19th-century movement
that had been completely subsumed into the Territorial Army long
before the outbreak of WWI - they would have become a
Territorial Battalion of a regular country regiment.
Fellowes decided to have the Downton Abbey household carry on
their pre-war life for the first two years of the war, largely
unaffected by it; it only starts to impinge on them in 1916.
Which is absurd. Everybody had lost relatives in the war
(certainly all the aristocracy), or at least had friends who
had. There was a major 'servant problem', since able-bodied men
were called up and women found they could get far better pay and
conditions in munitions factories than in service. And, most of
all, in rural Yorkshire where they live, a huge shocking
atrocity took place - in December 1914 the German Navy shelled
the Yorkshire ports of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby,
destroying hundreds of houses and killing many civilians.
Nothing like that had even happened before. The whole nation was
rocked back on its heels, and people at Downton, just 50 miles
inland would have felt themselves almost directly under attack.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Scarborough,_Hartlepool_and_Whitby
One more thing (since I've probably bored you all to tears
already): the Crawleys were strikingly selfish and unpatriotic
during the war. Many great houses were turned into hospitals
right at beginning of the war (including Highclere Castle, the
real 'Downton', where the Countess of Carnarvon began fitting it
out for the purpose before war broke out; it was taking patients
already in September 1914), and scads of duchesses and their
daughters trained as nurses and did real nursing work -
assisting at operations, emptying bedpans, the lot; many of them
behind the lines in France. The Crawleys' half-hearted effort,
right at the end of the war, offering convalescent facilities to
officers only, with two of their daughters providing a little
ladylike bustling around, is pathetic in comparison.
#Post#: 37529--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: caroled Date: August 26, 2019, 3:56 pm
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Not bored to tears at all! Would love this to be a separate
regular thread. Still love the show , even though historical
inaccuracies seem to run rampant. Do tell me more!
#Post#: 37580--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: jpcher Date: August 27, 2019, 3:56 pm
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[quote author=caroled link=topic=1288.msg37529#msg37529
date=1566852995]
Not bored to tears at all! Would love this to be a separate
regular thread. Still love the show , even though historical
inaccuracies seem to run rampant. Do tell me more!
[/quote]
I suggest you start a thread in the "Entertainment" topic under
"The Brimstone Lounge - Off Topic Discussion" category. ;)
#Post#: 37748--------------------------------------------------
Re: Doing away with the wedding breakfast
By: JeanFromBNA Date: August 30, 2019, 2:48 pm
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Thank you for the long and detailed reply, Aleko. And to cap
off the list of errors, I did re-watch Season 3, Episode 1,
which took place immediately preceding Mary and Matthew's
wedding, and they had a wedding rehearsal ;D. I remember
thinking at the time that I didn't think that rehearsals were
done back then.
Some of the soapy plots and plot holes were frustrating, but I
admit to being a fan. It was so enjoyable to watch. My
grandparents were in service at around the same time the series
took place, and they brought to the U.S. some very English
opinions of How Things Should Be Done at table and in the
household. Watching Downton Abbey brings back fond memories.
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