Last updated 19:43, Thursday, 24 July 2008

“YOU can bury yourself in confetti if you like, but you shall not do it in my church!”

It was 1919 when the Rev JA Richards, vicar of Maryport, wrote these words in his parish magazine.

He was trying to put an end to the little spot of controversy, mostly press inspired, that a previous piece he’d penned for the same publication had caused.

He was against the use of confetti at weddings. To be strictly accurate, which some newspapers chose not to be, he was strongly opposed to couples arriving at the church and going down to the altar, smothered in confetti.

He thought it, “irreverent, unseemly and unkind.”

He informed his parishioners that if couples did turn up at his church dripping with confetti, he would refuse to let them enter and would only marry them once they had come back in a respectable condition.

For some reason, he made the national dailies - the Daily Dispatch; John Bull and even a lead article in the Manchester Guardian.

The story might even have been picked up by some of the world’s press. All about a ban on confetti throwing.

It must have been the newspapers’ silly season. They had a field day. Then, as now, silly vicars were fair game.

He was not against confetti being thrown after the wedding, outside the church.

Unlike a few of today’s more miserable clerics who preface their marriage services with so many “thou shalt nots” that they put a dampener on proceedings.

The Reverend gentleman felt that “it was abominable that vulgar, brainless people should be allowed to smother them with confetti” and that “strong measures should be taken to put this down,” adding that “an action for assault would probably be successful.”

A strange idea! Were the happy couple to sue their over enthusiastic guests and neighbours?

Or was the vicar going to sue them? And for what?

The concluding line of a letter in John Bull probably sums up the whole affair. “You exceed your rights and make yourself ridiculous, good sir.”

The Rev J Ewbank, vicar Of Christ Church, Cockermouth, did once make an application to Cockermouth magistrates “for protection, to parties getting married, from assault by the throwing of rice, etc.”

He did have a personal axe to grind, stating that “in the case of his own marriage, the nuisance was almost unsupportable.”

The horseplay at weddings, he felt, was often so bad that it put people off getting married in church and drove them into the arms of the register office.

He wasn’t in favour of this, asserting that the “Register office was intended only for heathens.”

Even though the magistrates were initially amused by the application, they agreed that police should be empowered to protect bridal parties at his church from harassment.

Some weeks before the application, a young bridegroom had to be taken to hospital after being showered with rice.

He lost an eye due to overzealous celebrations. Perhaps this minor tragedy influenced the magistrates’ decision.

Our local vicars got off lightly. Had they been living in some areas of France, the congregation would have thrown nuts at the happy couple while they were at the altar.

Almost inevitably, a few nuts would have landed on any officiating cleric.

If that would have bothered them, they could thank their lucky stars they weren’t officiating in some parts of Wales.

Congregations there, at one time, threw both apples and nuts – at the vicar!

After the wedding ceremony, it didn’t get any better for the married couple.

They could get pelted with rice, confetti, nuts and old shoes or slippers.

In earlier times, the father of the bride would, during the wedding ceremony, have handed one of his daughter’s shoes, or slippers, to his future son-in-law.

This was to show that he was handing over all responsibility for his daughter to him.

The bridegroom would then, symbolically, let his new wife know who was boss by tapping her on the side of her head with the shoe. There’s a lot to be said for reviving some of these old customs.