10 Old Wedding Traditions You Didn't Know Existed

After the ceremony, the bride had to speak to her parents first.

The prim and proper Ladies' Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness, published in 1872, gives crisp directions for how the congratulations should be bestowed upon the bride, instructing that, "After the ceremony is over, the parents of the bride speak to her first; then her near relatives, and not until then the other members of the company." We're still not sure where the bride's newly minted husband fell in this archaic lineup.