Talk:Bridesmaid

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I moved this text here: "the bridesmaid would protect the bride against evil by wearing similar clothing to the bride's attire. This would confuse any "evil spirit" as to who the bride was. " Invented "folk customs" seem to be a cottage industry. Anyone who thinks this is real history might improve it with an old quote and return it to the entry. --Wetman 21:12, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Citation required - custom of bridal party dressing alike

Cited source (Britannica entry) did not mention customs of dress for the bridal party. Citation removed and left a [Citation needed] mark to indicate that this has no currently referenced source.

I'd checked that because it seemed surprising. Roman marriage customs changed a lot over time and I'd expect at least information about the period during which any custom was active to be mentioned.

Citogenesis

The 'Origins' section of this article appears to have all the hallmarks of a classic case of citogenesis. The original text dates from 2005, but with no citation offered at the time. A reference to Encyclopedia Britannica was added later, but was removed because it made no reference to any 'Roman Law' requiring ten witnesses, let alone the superstition as to why so many witnesses would be required. Yet I see this 'folk tradition' crop up all over the place, mostly on wedding sites and "Did You Know?" type sites (mentalfloss and "Today I Learned" on reddit being two recent examples), but every time there is no evidence offered. I'm removing the original; if someone wants to reinstate, please make sure you have actual evidence in hand when you do. PublicolaMinor (talk) 23:50, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

E.g. this book, which is from 2001 and therefore predating this Wikipedia article, is making the same claims as the text you removed, so the first appearance of these claims isn't Wikipedia. --Distelfinck (talk) 00:41, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear we didn't start it, though now I'm curious who did. I'd be surprised if the book you linked wasn't the original source for the claim here, since the phrasing (including the capitalization error) appears to be identical. It's clearly not a reliable source though -- I could point out any number of fallacious 'facts' in the book, unrelated to this case, and there's no way to verify which of the books' claims are true or false without a secondary source, who it'd be better to cite in the first place. PublicolaMinor (talk) 08:43, 29 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The specific factoid combining ten Roman witnesses and bride-doubles appears to have been born in the 1929 How the World Weds: The Story of Marriage, Adultery & Divorce (p. 68) - the author is Claudia de Lys, who appears to have been a more-or-less real anthropologist. And the Roman ten witnesses thing as cited in de Lys ultimately comes from the real Roman custom of Confarreatio. Another more-or-less real anthropologist Ernest Crawley wrote on this, and similar customs in several cultures, at more length in the 1902 The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage, and its Mock Brides section may be worth mining, if some of it can be confirmed by modern sources.--Pharos (talk) 06:58, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, perhaps the 'Origin and history' section could be more profitably replaced by a more general section on 'Women wedding attendants in world cultures', because the role being fulfilled in most cases is not really "bridesmaid" in the modern Western sense.--Pharos (talk) 17:56, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Best Man

Surely in British English (which I speak) the equivalent of Chief Bridesmaid is the Best Man? The Groom's chief attendant, usually best friend or brother. An "usher" is someone who shows people to their seats, the same meaning applies to an usher in a cinema or theatre. It's not a particularly honourable role. Perhaps that's just for upper-class weddings. The few normal-person weddings I've been to have had Best Man, not an usher, as chief male guest.

BTW far as I know, Best Man comes from "second-best man", who would be expected to marry the bride himself if the groom was incapacitated. Not sure how often that actually happens.

188.29.165.91 (talk) 07:13, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]