Among the convivial Anglo-Saxons the marriage would have been considered a very tame affair without the accompanying excesses of unrestrained feasting, drinking, and mirth. The clergyman who had pronounced the benediction at the nuptials came to the feast with a company of his clerical friends. The wedding feast lasted for at least three days, and was a time of gluttony and rioting. On the first day, the festivities were opened by the clergy rising and singing a psalm or other religious song. The wandering gleemen, who were always present at these feasts, then took up the singing; and as they proceeded, to the clamorous approval of the drunken company, they became less and less mindful of the proprieties of sentiment and of action. The bride and groom were not obliged to remain to the end of the revelry, but might avail themselves of an opportunity to slip out from the hall. When the company was surfeited with festivities, the more sober of them formed a procession, with the clergy in the lead, and with musical attendance conducted the bride and groom to the nuptial couch. The bed was formally blessed by the priest, the marriage cup was drunk by the bride and the groom, and then the couple were left by their friends, who returned to the hall and renewed their feasting. Even Alfred the Great, good and wise as he was, could not escape the customs of his times, and was compelled to indulge in such excesses at his wedding that he never quite recovered from an attack of illness he suffered in consequence.
Having noticed the rudeness to which the bride was subjected, it is gratifying to mention a more pleasant bit of waggery that was much in vogue, and that corresponds more nearly to the wedding pranks of to-day. One of the symbolic features of the wedding was the touching by the bridegroom of the forehead of the bride with one of his shoes. This signified that her father's right in her had passed to her husband. But when the couple were conducted to their nuptial couch by the bridal company, it was quite likely, if the bride had a reputation for shrewishness, that the shoe, which after the ceremony had been placed on the husband's side of the bed, would be found on the bride's side--a hint that the general conviction was that the headship of the family would be found to be vested in the wife. We can see from this that the custom of throwing an old shoe after a bride to give her "good luck" really signifies the wish that she may dominate the new establishment.