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Mother & Daughter Holding a Double Wedding?

Inquiring minds want to know the proper etiquette for double weddings. Not just any double wedding – but a double wedding involving both the mother and the daughter.

Whom to ask?

Why, Emily Post of course. And, like E. F. Hutton – when Emily Post spoke, people listened.

In this 1959 Q&A newspaper article, a widow and her daughter wanted to be married at the same time, in a double wedding, and she told Emily Post she “wondered about the propriety of such an arrangement.”

Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), 20 August 1959, page 3

Emily Post wrote back: “It would be very unusual, but I see no possible impropriety in it.”

Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), 20 August 1959, page 3

She went on to explain how best to handle the wedding:

“It seems to me that the best procedure would be for you, as mother of the bride, to sit as usual in the front pew. Your fiancé would be seated beside you. Then at the end of the marriage service of your daughter, instead of the recessional being played and your daughter and her husband walking out, they would step aside and you and your fiancé take your places where they have been standing and have the clergyman marry you. At the end of this, the recessional would be played and your daughter and her husband would walk out first with you and your husband following.”

And there you have it: the proper way to hold a double wedding, when you and your mother are getting married on the same day, according to Emily Post.

GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives can get you the answer to every question.

Now, let’s toast the happy couples.