New Brunswick Museum unveils historic wedding collection

The New Brunswick Museum is unveiling a collection of historic wedding items this Saturday in Saint John.

As wedding season draws near, the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John is unveiling a collection of historic wedding items.

Part of the collection includes a silent film from 1925 of the wedding of the youngest daughter of former mayor Walter Woodworth White.

“The New Brunswick Archives and Research Library collections include quite a variety of material related to weddings and marriages,” says Felicity Osepchook, the head of museum archives and research.

Several journals, scrapbooks and photographs are also on display, offering a glimpse into how weddings were conducted in a different era.

“The weddings seem to take place at a different time; the time of day was different. They were quite often in the early evening or early morning,” says Osepchook.

“We tend to think weddings take place from April on, but mostly in the summer months now, whereas at that time a lot of them took place in January.”

The collection also includes a journal dating back to the 1840s, which offers new husbands and wives advice on how to have a happy marriage.

“The little book itself is called the Wedding Gift, so it was given to a young couple upon their marriage, and so it was really to sort of instruct them in their roles as husband and wife,” says Christine Little of the New Brunswick Museum Archives.

While many of the photos on display depict sombre-looking bridal parties, one photo has a modern-day twist.

“It was dated 1919 and it’s a candid shot a group of women trying to catch the bouquet and that’s really unusual for that time period, to have a candid shot like that,” says Osepchook.

The museum has also uncovered some scandals among the mostly blissful wedding stories.

“In the early 1900s, the actual age for marriage was 21,” says Osepchook. “You couldn’t get married before that, and there were a couple who wanted to get married. They were 18 years old and the woman fled to her fiancés house and they somehow managed to get married.”

Visitors hoping to get a glimpse at the Road to Wedded Bliss: Matrimonial Madness, Blushing Brides & Spousal Scandal should save the date for this Saturday.

The presentation runs all morning and an RSVP is required by Friday.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ashley Dunbar