Page "Bride" Paragraph 11

The term bride appears in combination with many words, some of which are obsolete.

Thus " bridegroom " is a newly married man, and " bride-bell ," " bride-banquet " are old equivalents of wedding-bells, wedding-breakfast.

" Bridal " ( from Bride-ale ), originally the wedding-feast itself, has grown into a general descriptive adjective, the bridal ceremony.

The bride-cake had its origin in the Roman confarreatio, an upper-class form of marriage, the essential features of whose ceremony were the eating by the couple of a cake made of salt, water and spelt flour, and the holding by the bride of three wheat-ears, a symbol of plenty.