WHOLESALE MARRIAGES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19940, 6 November 1926, Page 10

WHOLESALE MARRIAGES.

BRUSSELS’ WEDDING DAYS THE LUXURY OF TUESDAYS. RESPECTABLE WEDNESDAYS. If one is a millionaire in Brussels he is married on Tuesday. I£ he is a pauper Saturday morning is the only time that she or he can choose at which to acquire a husband or wife. And if one is neither rich nor poor, but a member of the great middle class, then he is married on Wednesday at XI o’clock in the morning. The ceremonial form is decreed by law in Brussels, where three times a week the brides and bridegrooms of the city are led forth by their nearest kin, says Dorothy Ducas in the New York Herald-Tribune, and in a royal ceremony, with the pomp and splendour of a coronation, hundreds of them are married in one room, till death do us part.” In order that it shall not be nscessary for hundreds of people to pledge allegiance to all of the others, the proper two persons are called to the front of the great hall in the Hotel de Ville, the municipal building, where all the marriages take place, and swear to love, honour, and obey each other. In spite of this precaution, marriage mav be said to exist on a wholesale basis in Brussels, for none of these civil marriage* is performed in private. The law docs not specify that the rich shall be separated from the poor, however. This is determined by the fee which is attached to the marriage license issued on the various marriage days. On Tuesday it is a fairly large sum that only the rich citizens can afford to spend on the simple process of being married. The real wedding presided over by a clergyman or priest, usually comes after the civil ceremony, although it is not legally necessary. Most of the citizens save their francs for this lateroccasion, and therefore it is only the wealthy class that weds on Tuesday. Wednesday is more popular than Tuesday, for in Brussels, as in other parts of the world, there are people who do not want to be classed as poor, even if they are without worldly possessions Many of those who can ill afford it are married on Wednesday, that simple service being for them a defiant gesture to the world in general. “Oh, yes,” says the Brussels charwoman in later years, "I was married on a ‘Wednesday.” Such a boast carries with it some small shreds of dignity. But Saturday is the most popular day of all tor getting married, for on that day the great marriage room in the Hotel de Ville is thrown open to all comers—the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the beggar, the chimney sweep, the poorest farmhand from the outskirts of the city. They all are married together in the very same room and in the very same way as their richer brothers and sisters —and there is no fee at all I The marriage room is never used for any other purpoee. Four days a week it stands empty and quiet; not even tourists are allowed to enter. The special stairway of the lions, an entrance to the building, is reserved for the sacred feet of those who would sacrifice at the altar of Hymen, and on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays a thick silken tope is strung across the doorway, so that not even the superintendent of the-building can tread the hallowed ground.