Wedding Bells and Chimney Sweeps

Book excerpt: Wedding Bells and Chimney Sweeps is a wideranging, highly readable collection of information about marriage, a miscellany of facts, lore, statistics, old wives' tales, historical snippets, anecdotes, quotations, myths and superstitions.From the origin of the reading of banns to marriages conducted by ships' captains, the significance to a bride of the wooden spoon to the tradition of tossing her garter, the red tape required before a marriage can take place to Amish weddings and wedlock in literature, here is a book in which readers, married, soon-to-be-married, or determinedly single, are bound to find something to interest, amuse, astonish or, sometimes, appal them.Whether read or dipped into by anxious fiancé, nervous bride, doubtful father-in-law, doting aunt, beaming bridesmaid or melancholy former lover - or simply someone with a passing interest in some of our oldest traditions, religious and pagan - this is a book to delight even the least romantically minded reader.