Today the dh and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary and we want to take a little break to do something fun. So I’m recycling a 2008 blog I did on Regency Weddings.

We were married a gazillion years ago, before a bride would even DREAM of a wearing a  strapless gown. Before I married, I’d never read Georgette Heyer or Regency Romances and it had been a few years since I’d read Jane Austen.

But take a look at my wedding dress.

It’s a little hard to tell here, but it has an empire waist, leg o’mutton sleeves, and ribbon trim. It’s a Regency Dress!

I’d never heard of the Regency, but somehow I picked a Regency dress.

Like me, Regency brides did wear white, but they didn’t have to. In the Regency, white gowns were popular for many occasions. Other colors like pale pink and blue were also worn at weddings. The older the bride, the darker the color. Wedding dresses were worn after the wedding, too. By the time Queen Victoria became a bride and wore white, the white wedding dress was well on its way to becoming a tradition.

Princess Charlotte, who wed Prince Leopold in 1816, wore a dress of silver lamé, embroidered in silver. 

Sites that tell more about Regency Weddings:

Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion

Regency Weddings

Quick facts about Regency Weddings:

1. Weddings could take place after reading of the Banns, a license, or a special license. Banns must be read for three consecutive Sundays in the parishes of both the prospective bride and groom. A license, purchased from the bishop of the diocese, did away with the banns but the couple still had to be married in the parish church. A special license, purchased from the Archbishop of Canterbury, allowed the couple to be married in a location other than a church and without banns. Licenses were never blank; different names could not be substituted.

2. Scottish weddings went by different rules. In Scotland couples could be married by declaring themselves married in front of witnesses, by making a promise to marry followed by intercourse, or by living together and calling themselves married.

3. Weddings could not be performed by proxy. Both the bride and groom had to be present.

4. Ship captains could not perform marriages. Couples could be married aboard ship, but only by clergy. (How many times have you read that plot?)

5. Brides had wedding rings; grooms did not. The bride could give the groom a ring as a wedding gift, but it was not part of the ceremony and didn’t symbolize he was married.

Do you want a Regency Wedding? There are many sites on the internet offering custom made Regency wedding dresses:

Jane Austen Centre Giftshop
Fashions in Time

Or if you are handy, you could make your Regency gown:

Do you have any questions about Regency weddings?

Did anyone else have a Regency wedding dress?

A Reputation for Notoriety is now available as an ebook, if you are like me and prefer ebooks.

The winner of a copy of The English Lily is….niteofblu at gmail dot com!!   Congrats!  Send your contact info to Kathe AT klwheeler.com…

Last week I finally got the cover for my September Harlequin Historicals release, The Runaway Countess!!  It’s such a suspenseful moment just before opening those new cover files.  Will it be hideous?  Beautiful? Make my heroine look weirdly like Miley Cyrus or something?  But I didn’t need to worry at all about this one, I love it wholeheartedly.

Wed to wickedness 

In Society’s eyes, Hayden Fitzwalter, Earl of Ramsay and Jane Bancroft have the perfect marriage. But what can’t be seen are the secrets hidden behind closed doors. Believing Hayden will never renounce his dissolute ways, Jane flees to her family’s dilapidated estate in the country. 

Years later, Hayden now longs to win back the only woman who has ever touched his heart. But first he has to convince her that this rogue is ready to be tamed…. 

BANCROFTS OF BARTON PARK 

Two sisters, two scandals, two sizzling love affairs

It’s available for pre-order now…

This book was my first attempt at a “marriage in trouble” story, which was a fun challenge!  How to take a couple already married, but torn apart by disappointed expectations and a lost child.  It made writing their HEA twice as sweet, I think.  (Book two will be the story of Jane’s free-spirited sister Emma…)

Do you like “marriage in trouble” plots??  What do you look for in Regency covers?

And I will be drawing a winner for Kae Elle Wheeler’s The English Lily later tonight!  You still have time to comment on last Tuesday’s post….

(Amanda will be back with her regularly scheduled Tuesday post next week!  In the meantime, her friend Kae Elle Wheeler has agreed to visit the Riskies again with a look at her new release, The English Lily!  Comment for a chance to win a copy…)

Lady Kendra has led a long fruitful life. But as a young woman, and in a major turning point of her life, her time with Charles Thomas was cut remarkably short. To ease her mind, she sends him a heart-filled note.

Dear Mr. Thomas,

I realize it is most inappropriate for me to send you this letter, but rest assured I have my husband’s utmost approval. It has been many years since I last saw you, and the memory still haunts my dreams I fear. I thought if I could enlighten you to my situation we might each finally move forward, where ever that might be for you now.

Since that most fateful day aboard the Cecilé, I married Joseph. True, he was a most successful magician, but I am pleased to say he has proved an even more devoted husband and father. We have four beautiful children. Our eldest and heir to Yarmouth named Charles for you, my dear friend. You would be most proud of Charles, for he is a brilliant scholar and benefactor of The School for the Poor and Unfortunate. The others fell closely in his footsteps in their efforts to realize your dreams. Aaron, our most athletic is an avid hunter and horseman. Our girls, twins, mind, Julia and Jane, followed in their father’s way with his magic. Oh, not that Joseph would allow them to tread the boards! But he taught them all of his silly parlour tricks on which the two took to perfecting and creating with havoc of their own.

For many years, I kept in very close contact with your mother, to her very end. I am proud she called me Friend. Finally, you will be most happy to know my husband reads a beautiful poem or story to me each and every night when we retire, and on occasion, I find I quite enjoy reading one to him as well.

I hope this note will offer you the peace that is descending on me as I pen it.

Yours forever, most devotedly so,

Kendra Frazier, Lady Yarmouth

From the back cover:  Lady Kendra Frazier is devastated. The love of her life just married another, and now all she desires is to be as far away as possible. Viscount Lawrie, Joseph Pinetti Gray, is facing financial ruin and needs a wealthy heiress. Luckily for him, Kendra’s impetuous nature has handed him the fortuity he requires to save his family’s downfall. But Joseph’s carefully cultivated plans come to a grinding halt when he finds himself falling in love for what should have only been a marriage of convenience. And how can an old cursed doll help?

The Oklahoma Romance Writers of America, through The Wild Rose Press, have a series of books. Each Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll book must meet a certain criteria. This criteria includes a tie to Oklahoma in some fashion, portraying the curse of the doll accurately, must be romance and the hero/heroine cannot have been married to one another previously.

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Kae Elle Wheeler has a BA degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Management Information Systems that includes over forty credit hours of vocal music. As a computer programmer the past fifteen years, she utilizes karaoke for her vocal music talents. Other passions include fantasy football, NBA and musical theatre season tickets, and jazzercise. Because to quote Nora Roberts to a one time question, if she worked out? Her reply, “You have to get off your ass.”

Kae began has been a member of the Oklahoma Chapter of Romance Writer’s of America and the RWA since March of 2007. She grew up in the Dallas area and definitely considers herself a city girl. She does not limit her travels to Writer Conferences in San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle, Dallas, New Jersey, New York City and Atlanta because Jazzercise has fun conferences too (Denver, Palm Springs and Orlando). You can’t keep her at home!

She is a member of several RWA Chapters, including DARA, The Beau Monde and Passionate Ink. She has held several positions in the OKRWA Chapter, currently serving as Programs Director. As an avid reader of romance and patron of theatre, her main sources of inspiration come from mostly an over-active imagination. She currently resides in Edmond, Oklahoma with her musically talented husband, Al, and their bossy cat, Carly.