Wedding In The Elizabethan Era

Logan:
First: Elizabethan era wedding were held at the bride or grooms local church.
Second:
Weddings were always a religious ceremony, conducted by a minister. The religions varied but the legal process prior to the wedding was always the same. There were no Registry Office marriages or marriages conducted by a Justice of the Peace. The first stage was Crying the Banns, announcing a couple's intention to marry. The same procedure still applies to Church marriages in England today. The Elizabethan Wedding custom dictated that the couple's intention to marry had to be announced in the church three times on three consecutive Sundays or Holy days. This allowed time for any objections to be raised or pre-contracts to be discovered. Any marriage not published beforehand was considered clandestine and illegal. Wedding invitations were not issued. People lived in small communities

and knew what was happening in common wwwlife. If there was an Elizabethan wedding then people would just attend. Gifts were occasionally given to the Bride and Groom.
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-marriages-and-weddings.htm
Logan:
First: The Tudor period rarely much attention was paid to the religious ceremony itself. All diary entries, records and literature show that the ecclesiastical involvement in the affair took literally minutes to complete. That said, it was heavily scripted, and the script had to be followed to the letter.
Second: would come the bridal procession was ment Thomas Deloney reports that, for the second wedding of Jack of Newbury, the bride:
"her head attired with a biliment of gold, was led to the church according to the manner in those days between two sweet boys, with bride laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves There was a fair bride cup of silver and gilt carried before her, wherein was a goodly branch of rosemary gilded very fair, hung about with silken ribbons of all colours; next was a great noise of musicians that played all the way before her; after her came all the chiefest maidens of the country, some bearing bride cakes, and some garlands of wheat finely gilded, and so she passed into the church"
Third: As the party reached the church door, the dower would be paid by the bridegroom or his family.

Post-Reformation, the ceremony itself invariably took place indoors. The bridegroom would stand to the right, the bride to the left. The priest would read the banns and ask three times if there was anything that would prevent the marriage from taking place, much the same as

today.
Forth: The priest would then ask of both parties were willing to continue, and (hopefully) they would respond: "I will".
Fifth: The bride would be presented by her father or some other male authority. The pair would clasp their right hands together - if the woman was a maid, her hand was uncovered, if a widow, gloved. The man's vows were as follows:
Six: "I, (name), take thee (name) to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forth, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart, if holy church will it ordain, and thereto I plight my troth."
Seventh: The bride would then respond:
"I, [name], take thee [name] to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forth, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonair and buxom, in bed and at board, till death us depart, if holy church will it ordain, and thereto I plight thee my troth."
Eighth: The ring exchange varied depending on whether the ceremony was Catholic or Protestant, the latter being significantly simpler. In Catholic tradition, the bridegroom would lay the ring (together with some money) onto a book or a dish in front of the priest, who would sprinkle it with holy water and bless it: "that she who shall wear it may be armed with the strength of heavenly defence, and that it may be profitable unto her eternal salvation".
Ninth: The man would then take the ring in his right hand with his first three fingers, holding the right hand of the bride with his left, and say: "With this ring I thee wed and this gold and silver I thee give; and with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly cattle I thee honour".
Tenth: He would then touch the ring against the thumb of her left hand, saying "In the name of the father", then her forefinger "and of the son", then her middle finger "and of the Holy Ghost", then put it on her ring finger with a closing "Amen".
The Protestant tradition replaced it. It almost is in almost all regards identical to how we do it today, but a bit morelacking the elaborations and positional instructions I described above.
Informality
While the picture they would have painted above is how things should go, in practice many of the lower classes were slightly irreverent in their approach to the whole thing. People would turn up with bagpipes and fiddles to play throughout the ceremony, women would come bare-headed (the horror!), "with diverse other heathenish toys [such] as carrying of wheat sheaves on their heads, and casting of corn [...] they make rather a May game of marriage Eleventh: than a holy institution of God". Dancing, drinking, talking, laughing, and more drinking would go on while the priest went through the motions, to the point where some ministers tried (and failed) to enforce codes of conduct banning obscene gestures and excess movement among the audience while they did their thing. A parish clerk in Kent was charged for dressing up in his wife's clothing for a wedding in 1599, which he apparently did just for a laugh. There are many other records of arrest for wedding partiers drunkenly disturbing religious services throughout the day.
After the words were said, everyone would spill back out of the church and begin the social gatherings and celebrations that everyone was far more interested in. These could last for hours or even days. Excess and wantonness were the watchwords, with drink, food, and ribald jokes aplenty. Health-drinking, dancing, and games involving the exchange of more intimate items of clothing were popular, according to both supporters and detractors of the excess that these celebrations inevitably brought to town:
Twelth: "After the banquet and feat there beginneth a vain, mad, and unmannerly fashion. For the bride must be brought into an open dancing place. Then is there such a running, leaping and flinging among them, then is there such a lifting up and discovering of the damsels' clothes and of other women's apparel, that a man might think all these dancers had cast all shame behind them [etc etc]. The bride must keep foot with all dancers and refuse none, how scabbed, foul, drunken, rude, and shameless soever he be. Then must she oftimes hear and see much wickedness and many an uncomely word. And that noise and rumbling endureth even till supper. As for Supper, look how much shameless and drunken the evening is more than the morning. So much the more vice, excess, and misnurture is used at the supper. After supper must they begin to play the pipes and dance again.