Bidding Weddings

Throughout time everyone has loved a wedding and much preparation takes place to make the day a memorable and happy one. Until around the end of the nineteenth century, the custom of ‘Bidding’ Weddings (also known as ‘Beading’ or ‘Bridewain’), was celebrated in traditional style, with feasting and frivolity, in the Oystermouth and South Gower areas.

The bride and bridegroom, both called ‘Brides’, would have the banns called in Church, and would then keep everyone guessing as to who would be invited or ‘beaded’, to the wedding. A Beader would be appointed to invite the guests. He, carrying a staff decorated with red, white and blue ribbons, would call at each house and repeat the ‘Bidding Rhyme’ to those invited.

At the ‘Wedding House,’ brewing would start immediately, and continue until the ‘big day’, the brew being sold to anyone and the proceeds going to the Couple.

On the eve of the wedding, relatives and friends would visit the Wedding House (not necessarily the bride's house, but chosen for convenience or perhaps because there was a good sized kitchen) and bring ‘presents’ of currant loaves. Also on that night, friends would sometimes fire a salute from their guns over the bride's house. This was traditionally intended to drive away evil spirits.

On the day itself, often a Thursday, the ‘brides’ would leave the Wedding House together and, accompanied by their guests, walk to the Church, led by a fiddler, whose fiddle was bedecked with white ribbons. After the Church ceremony, the procession would reform and march to the nearest local, where the brides would thank the innkeeper for allowing them to ‘steal his trade’. There they would stay for a while and then after leaving, would be greeted by gunshots and several times be stopped from proceeding by ropes stretched across the road. This ‘chaining of the Brides’ would be followed by a demand for a money toll, which would be paid. The procession would then walk to the Wedding House, where a lovely dinner awaited them.

The ‘brides’ would sit side by side at the head of one table and next to them, the ‘bidder.’ ‘Tin-meat’ would be served (this was meat baked in tins in a brick oven), followed by the currant loaves. These would be cut into pieces and sold at the wedding feast, mainly to young single men who would coyly present them to an unmarried young girl present. The girls would then display them and the possessor of the largest number would be declared the ‘belle of the ball.’

The Bidder would go round the assembled guests with two plates for contributions and would receive the gift on one plate, call out the name of the donor, the amount would be recorded in a book by another man and the money transferred to the other plate. The single guests would give or ‘Heave’, money, which would help the happy couple to set up home. This was on the understanding that when it came their turn to be married, the money would be returned in the same way. All the money collected would then be given to the bride. The happy couple would also receive household goods from family and other friends.

No-one attended the ceremony and dinner without invitation, but supper and the dance which followed were open to all. Dancing, perhaps the ‘Gower Reel’, to the music of the fiddle, would invariably continue into the early hours.

Such days were very special to all, as they were a break from the long, hard, working routine. Sadly, they are one of the many colourful customs which have died out since the end of the nineteenth century and so, are no longer part of our modern, and in some ways, less colourful lives.