WHOLESALE MARRIAGES

Shannon News, 12 November 1926, Page 2

WHOLESALE MARRIAGES

BRUSSEL'S wedding days. THE LUXURY OF TUESDAYS. RESPECTABLE WEDNESDAYS. If one is a millionaire in Brussels lie is married on< Tuesday. If lie is a pauper Saturday morning is the only time that she or he can choose at which to acquire a husband or wife. And if one is neither rich nor poor, but a member of the great middle class, then he is married on Wednesday at 11 o’clock in the morning. The ceremonial form is decreed by law in Brussels, where three times "a week the brides and bridegrooms of the city are led forth by their nearest kin, says Dorothy Ducas in the New York Herald-Tribune, and in a royal ceremony, with the pomp and splendour of a coronation, hundreds of them are married in one room, till death do us part.” In order that fit shall not be necessary for hundreds of people to pledge allegiance to all of the others, the proper two persons are called to the front of the great hall in the Hotel do Ville, the municipal , building, where all the marriages take place, and swear to love, honour, and obey each other. In spite of this precaution, marriage may bo said to exist on a wholesale basis in Brussels, for none of these civil marriages is performed in private.

Tlxe law does not specify that the rich shall be separated from the poor, however.- This is determined by the fee which is aciaote-i Vj the ma nage license Issued on thee various marr,ag days. On Tuesday it is a fairly large sum that only the rich citizens can afford to spend on the simple process of being married. The real wedding, presided over by a clergyman or priest, ukially comes after the civil ceremony, although it is not legally necessary. Most of the citizens save their francs for this later occasion, and therefore it is only the wealthy class that weds on Tuesday.

Wednesday is more popular than .Tuesday, for in Brussels, as in other parts of the world, there are people who do not want to be classed as poor, even if they are without worldly possessions. Many of those who can ill afford it are "married on Wednesday, that simplp service being for them a defiaht gesture to the world in general.

“Oh, yes,” says the Brussels charwoman in later years, “I was married on a Wednesday.” Such a boast carries with it some small shreds,of dignity.

But Saturday is the most popular day of all for getting married, for on that day the great marriage room m the Hotel de Ville is open to all comers—-the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the beggar, the chimney sweep, the porest farmhand from the outskirts of the city. They ail are married together in the very same room and in the very same way as their richer brothers and sisters and there is no fee at all! The marriage room is never used

for any other purpose. Four days a week it stands empty and quiet, not even tourists are allowed to enter. The special stairway of the lions, an entrance to the building, is reserved for the sacred feet of those who would sacrifice at the altar of Hymen, and on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays a thick silken rope is strung across the doorway, so that not even the superintendent of the building can tread the hallowed ground.