chapter IV
Now, hold still and smile for the fresco artist…
Others in the wedding party, rather than the groom, might lift the bride over the threshold, as long as she was safely carried across and had no chance to trip on the doorstep (a bad luck sign). Although it’s staple sitcom joke nowadays to show the groom having trouble carrying his bride through the door, any stumbling while entering the house would have been taken seriously by these wedding guests.
The “Gaius and Gaia” formula was an ancient tradition. One could substitute the groom’s name, but saying “Gaius” linked the bride to a story of a virtuous wife from the earliest days of Rome, who declared herself one and the same being as her husband—whose name happened to be Gaius. Many elements of the traditional marriage ceremony recalled early Roman history, as well as symbolising the transfer of the bride from her parents’ hearth and gods and ancestors, to those of her husband.
There was a more complex ceremony when members of the patrician nobility married in a way that would qualify them for priestly purity. And after that, the restrictions on what they could wear, touch, where they could sleep, even where they could walk became extremely complicated. Mus has an entirely different set of rules to worry about.
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