A wedding breakfast is a

feast A banquet (; ) is a formal large meal where a number of people consume food together. Banquets are traditionally held to enhance the prestige of a host, or reinforce social bonds among joint contributors. Modern examples of these purposes i ...

given to the newlyweds and guests after the wedding, making it equivalent to a

wedding reception A wedding reception is a party usually held after the completion of a marriage ceremony as hospitality for those who have attended the wedding, hence the name reception: the couple ''receive'' society, in the form of family and friends, for t ...

that serves a meal. The phrase is still used in

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

. Nowadays the wedding breakfast is not normally a morning meal, nor does it look like a typical breakfast, so its name can be confusing.

Origin of the name

The name is claimed to have arisen from the fact that in pre-Reformation times, the wedding service was usually a

Eucharist The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

and that the newlyweds would therefore have been

fasting Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see " Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after ...

before the wedding in order to be eligible to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. After the wedding ceremony was complete, the priest would bless and distribute some wine, cakes, and

sweetmeats Confectionery is the art of making confections, which are food items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates. Exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confectionery is divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categorie ...

, which were then handed round to the company, including the newlyweds. This distribution of food and drink was therefore a literal "break fast" for the newly married couple, though others in attendance would not necessarily take Communion and therefore would not necessarily have been fasting. Since usage of the phrase cannot be shown to date back earlier than the first half of the 19th century however, a pre-16th-century origin seems unlikely. The author of ''Party-giving on Every Scale'' (London, 1880) suggests the phrase may have evolved fifty years earlier: The ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

'' does not record any occurrences of the phrase "wedding breakfast" before 1850, but it was used at least as far back as 1838. This would agree with the quotation above, which suggests the phrase came into use about the 1830s.

Current use

The ''Compact Oxford Dictionary'' lists the phrase as only "British", and the Merriam-Webster online dictionary does not list it at all. The custom of the wedding breakfast is occasionally spotted in non-English-speaking countries that market themselves as wedding destinations, e.g. Poland.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wedding Breakfast Wedding traditions Breakfast

Origin of the name

Current use

See also

References