13 
13
It is not etiquette for any person to inquire where the honeymoon is to be spent and nobody but the two most interested is supposed to know anything of their immediate plans.
—Abby Buchanan Longstreet,
Social Etiquette of New York, 18791
Honeymoon origin stories abound, with one holding that when the man “swept a woman off her feet,” he was symbolically kidnapping her, and her relatives could be expected to search for her for the length of one phase of the moon. Alternately, the term “honeymoon” may stem from the practice of the newlyweds drinking mead (honey wine) for a month, as a nod to the sweetness of life. Another conjecture is that early marriage was sweet like honey, but its appeal waned like the moon, or that honey, so agreeable, derived from something that stings, such as the honeybee, which provides honey.
In one marriage ritual in bygone rural France, newlyweds were served a mixture of chocolate and champagne from a chamber pot. The couple’s friends also burst into the pair’s room on their wedding night. The raucous event, called la rôtie, was meant to mimic bodily functions and embarrass the bride while also alleviating her awkwardness at losing her virginity.2 Another French tradition was to bring newlyweds soup made from tripe, with milk and torn-up pieces of bread carried in either a bowl or a chamber pot.3
In the nineteenth century, upper-class Europeans took extended vacations after marrying, and as the middle class grew and emulated their habits, the “wedding tour” became more commonplace; the custom soon spread to the United States. The advent of airplanes and swift train and auto travel put honeymoons within the reach of people other than the elite. Researchers Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck add that the rise of the honeymoon coincided with the advent of paid vacations for the working classes.4
Etiquette whiz Amy Vanderbilt remarked in 1954 that honeymoons had been scaled down from the past and that in previous generations they “could encompass a whole summer and might include the entire wedding party at the bridegroom’s expense.”5
Family members once often accompanied newlyweds on their “tour” as they traveled to visit extended family relations. These holidays increased in popularity as more people came to live in cities, making a retreat to the countryside novel.
The honeymoon ideal shifted to a more private concept, and as more partnerships were founded in love, rather than strategic alliance, the appeal of a secluded location away from relations increased.6 Withdrawal to a private spot was especially significant to couples during a time when they were not likely to have been physically intimate before their trip to the altar. Another view sees the honeymoon, this retreat from peers, as a geographical “displacement,” engineered as a method for adjusting to a new and thoroughly disorienting endeavor—the journey from single to married.7 The wedding night came to be loaded with psychological import, and sexual themes abound in the rituals surrounding the honeymoon.
In much of American history, unmarried women had restricted opportunities to socialize. Their social circles were kept tight to hinder exposure to men who could jeopardize their reputations. Those situations considered “safe” usually limited them to the companionship of other respectable women, church activities, and charity work.8 In the Victorian era, when all behavior was so carefully tracked, women were on guard to protect their standing, and for a man not her fiancé or husband to call a woman by her first name would “cheapen” her.9
The hallmark of so-called “vulgar people” is unrestricted display of uncontrolled emotions.
—Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, in Business,
in Politics, and at Home, 192210
Once engaged, couples were granted latitude in their behavior. Although messages to practice restraint were everywhere, it was silently understood that it was a matter of time before the pair could unleash their passion. They were still expected to behave themselves in the interim, however. In the 1950s Amy Vanderbilt warned that although society may indulge the canoodling of engaged couples, “if this joy becomes too tactile, onlookers are visibly embarrassed.”11
Etiquette experts calling for restraint competed with a bridal industry that relentlessly invoked sexuality to sell products. Bridal magazines advertised lingerie, weight-loss plans, perfume, and cosmetics. It portrayed food and its preparation as a medium for enticing and pleasing a new husband.
By the early 1960s, bridal magazines included advertisements for “marriage manuals” and scattered clinical advice on sex and family planning in with recipes for tuna imperial. Interviews with Planned Parenthood doctors shared space with ads for baby furniture. Such divergent messages were typical of an industry that had already learned to offer something to everyone. Just as suffragettes had softened their image by producing cookbooks and feeding the troops, the wedding business used food to make precarious topics, like sex, palatable, clearing the way for the sale of goods packaged in the hominess of recipes and menu suggestions.
A display of appetite by women, especially in the late 1800s, was considered an indication of loose sexuality, with food consumption linked to a lack of control. Food was also disparaged because it was connected to “work,” as its preparation required labor.12 With women’s sphere so small, a honeymoon afforded a new and heady entry into a society as yet unseen by average brides. Until recent times, the honeymoon was also perhaps the first time a couple ate together regularly, establishing a new kind of intimacy and opening a window onto personal routines previously unknown.
In 1936’s Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell’s chronicle of the Civil War–era South, Scarlett O’Hara is told by Mammy, not for the first time, that she should eat before going to a society barbecue, it being improper for a young lady to demonstrate an appetite in the company of men. When Scarlett reminds her that her mother eats in public, Mammy tells Scarlet that married women can eat because they have already captured husbands.13
When Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales (and Henry VIII’s big brother), wed Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon in 1501, the streets of London flowed with free wine and food for the crowds. Henry, aged ten (and Catherine’s future husband), escorted her to the ceremony. The bride was sixteen and the groom fifteen. Her vows included a promise to be “bonair” (amiable in bed) and “buxom at board” (at the table).14 In keeping with custom, the couple was ceremonially led to the marital bed after the wedding dinner, a rite attended to by an entourage. Later in the evening, the same group returned with food and drinks to refresh the newlyweds. Catherine claimed their marriage was never consummated, and of course the disputed truth of this statement was the root of Henry’s famous divorce claim.
At the turn of the twentieth century, luxury ocean liners, with their sumptuous dining rooms, were top honeymoon venues. At a time when honeymoons of the elite lasted for months, a lazy sea voyage was a stylish way to travel to and from a European tour. The Titanic hosted at least thirteen honeymooning couples on its fateful journey. The first-class dining room hosted four sets of honeymooners on its final evening, with the most famous being John Jacob Astor IV (who had built the Waldorf Hotel) and his bride, Madeleine. Dinner in the first-class dining room consisted of ten courses; yet grand food may have been no solace to the Astors, who had taken to the seas as refuge from gossipmongers. John Astor had married a woman close to thirty years his junior, a year younger than his own son, scandalizing society with both his divorce and his new marriage. His ex-wife had friends onboard the liner, and despite being one of the wealthiest men in the world, he found his company shunned by the old guard, who requested a new table when seated near the newlyweds. Astor died on board the sinking vessel, although his newly pregnant wife survived.
The Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, was paid an exorbitant salary in comparison to other Cunard employees, and his ease and joviality with the elite were evidenced by his nickname: the “millionaire’s captain.” He favored the Widener family of Philadelphia, dining with them on what would be the last day of life for the captain as well as for George Widener and his twenty-seven-year-old son. Mrs. Widener, Nellie, survived. She was returning from a mission for her improbably nicknamed daughter Dimples, having taken her wedding dress to Paris to be trimmed with old family lace in preparation for her impending marriage.15
Sales of stale slices of wedding cake were outdone in October 2015 when a Greek investor purchased an official Titanic cracker for $23,000. The relic was from a survival kit installed on one of the lifeboats so famously underused on the night of the tragedy.16 This particular cracker had been squirreled away by James and Mabel Fenwick, a couple honeymooning on the Carpathia, a luxury liner that arrived in time to rescue some Titanic passengers.
One famous honeymoon was taken by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969. From the honeymoon suite of the Amsterdam Hilton, they staged their first “bed in,” allowing the press unlimited access as they sprawled on their mattress and appealed for world peace. They followed this with a “bagism” display in Vienna: concealed inside a bag meant to erase all reference to their physical selves, the couple nibbled Sacher torte and spoke to journalists. The Beatles song “The Ballad of John and Yoko” includes the lyric “eating chocolate cake in a bag,” referring to this event. From their bed in Montreal, Lennon and Ono recorded “Give Peace a Chance”; the backup singers included a rabbi, a priest, Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, and a bevy of Hindu priests.17
Las Vegas is an obvious destination for quickie weddings, honeymoons, and bachelor and bachelorette parties before the big day. The streets of this city, once known primarily for its business conventions, now teem with wedding chapels. Las Vegas’s prominence as a marriage destination arose from its loose divorce laws, with no waiting period between a divorce and a marriage. Vows can be exchanged at the Tunnel of Love Drive-Thru, on a gondola, or underwater at the Silverton Hotel Aquarium.
Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains, is another prevalent American wedding site; it also has no waiting period or residency requirements and seeks no blood test. The “Honeymoon Capital of the South” is a few miles from Dolly Parton’s hometown of Pigeon Forge, and tour companies have carved out an economy based on quickie weddings and southern hospitality. The Hillbilly Wedding Company advertises “simple basic weddings,” and an ordained Christian minister promises to wear bib overalls while administering vows. The town’s official vacation guide advertises Hillbilly Golf and tells of the Christ in the Smokies Museum and Gardens, home to a giant Christ sculpture with eyes that “seem to follow your every movement.” The community, which has vied to break records with its “marry-thons,” was largely founded by Reverend Ed of Gatlinburg Industries (subject of a lawsuit for violation of labor practices when it was revealed that every employee received a Bible upon hire).18
Niagara Falls became a popular destination in the 1880s and was especially fashionable in the 1950s as more honeymooners took to the roads in private cars rather than traveling by trains. By the late 1960s, its reputation had become somewhat threadbare. The location has come to be considered more kitschy than modern, but the Falls still court the bridal industry and provide an affordable destination for families.
Atlantic City was once a stylish honeymoon location, peaking in popularity in the 1920s. Strolling newlyweds paraded on the boardwalk and crammed the hotels and restaurants of the New Jersey shore. African Americans, who filled the bulk of the many service jobs in this seaside resort, experienced a lower measure of racism there compared to other regions, although Jim Crow laws were rampant all across the United States. In 1953, after Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wed Coretta Scott at her parents’ home in Alabama, the pair could not find a hotel to give them a room. They spent the night at a funeral parlor owned by a family friend.
The legalization of same-sex marriage has opened a new revenue stream for tourism professionals, and gay-specific wedding expos, guidebooks, and websites can ensure couples that vendors welcome their business. Operators offer guidelines for choosing gay-friendly honeymoon destinations, and some of the trendiest are New Hope, Pennsylvania; Asbury Park, New Jersey; and Eureka Springs, Arkansas (the “gay capital of Ozarks”). Cape Town, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Provincetown, Massachusetts; and Costa Rica are also known to be hospitable locales. Marriot, with its “Love Travels with Me” program, is one of many mainstream companies that work to sell honeymoon packages to the LGBT community. For years, the big tour companies have included information as to whether a locale is “gay-friendly,” but there is current debate as to whether tourist dollars should support the economies of some countries or towns. Same-sex couples are courted because the local economy depends on tourism; yet this hospitality may only serve as a veneer that hides discrimination. Some organizations have a “just say I don’t” category warning against certain businesses or locations.
Highland Beach, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, was founded by Charles Douglass, the war-hero son of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Humiliated when barred from eating at a water-side resort, he bought as much property as was available in the area and sold parcels to his friends and family, soon creating the first African American vacation resort.19
Idlewild, in Michigan, was a bustling African American resort whose popularity crested in the 1950s. Once called a “black Eden,” the region now hosts retirees and a diminished population, although community members hope to attract tourism by exploiting its historic significance. Like the shuttered Jewish resorts of the Catskills, Idlewild lost its allure when the 1964 Civil Rights Act integrated the hospitality business.
Oak Bluffs is a popular community on Martha’s Vineyard and a current favored vacation spot for prosperous blacks. It is a celebrated honeymoon destination and recommended by wedding planners as an Afrocentric getaway. It is home to the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, art galleries, and expensive restaurants.
Muslim-specific tourism is a burgeoning business, with resorts now offering honeymoon packages that include halal foods and a variety of non-alcoholic beverages. Some promise that the women will have their own beaches and swimming pools, and almost all promise a culture of modesty.
A couple in 2016 may seek a honeymoon on which they take cooking classes or go wine tasting, cheese tasting, or foraging; they may also choose a vegan-only bed and breakfast in Mendocino, California; a raw-food hotel in Bali; or a gluten-free, all-inclusive getaway in the Caribbean. Virtual honeymoon registries allow couples to register for their dream vacation, giving guests the option to contribute to honeymoon expenses. These sites have thrived, as various niche wedding sites hyperlink to them, driving traffic from an audience already interested in a certain hobby or lifestyle.
Jews, restricted from most resorts, went to the Catskills for their vacations, and the so-called borscht belt offered gourmet kosher food and live entertainment. Its many large banquet venues catered countless weddings and hosted innumerable honeymoons until the region’s demise in the 1990s.
Once the most famous of the “honeymoon hideaways,” Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos, folded in 2001. Its longtime owner, Emil Wagner, shot himself the night before the bank was slated to repossess the property. In its prime in the 1960s, Mount Airy had been an outrageously successful, all-inclusive pioneer, shuttling guests from one activity to another nourished by all-you-can-eat buffets.
Early in the 1960s, heart-shaped bathtubs began to appear in the romantic resorts of Pennsylvania’s Poconos Mountains. Hotelier Morris Wilkins laid claim to creating the first “sweetheart tub,” yet was unable to patent his design (he did, however, succeed in patenting his champagne glass bathtub, which rises seven feet in the air and is still the star of innumerable publicity photos).20
The all-inclusive packages of the Poconos, the self-proclaimed “honeymoon capital of the world,” included poolside pizza parties (in a heart-shaped swimming pool), breakfast in bed, wienie roasts, and a “Sleepyheads Coffee Bar.” Cold War newlyweds were seated at communal tables for meals, and cocktails were served en masse at dances and live shows. In Cinderella Dreams, authors Otnes and Pleck surmise that the flurry of group activities reflected a postwar society that put great value on conformity. They write that shared honeymoon meals served as “rehearsals” for impending lives in the suburbs, surrounded by peers of similar race and class (these resorts did not admit blacks or Jews), and hotel staff indeed booked guests in clusters with similar backgrounds. Most of the lodgers were working-class, with an average age of nineteen for the brides, so the vacation often provided these young people with “their first hotel stay, their first restaurant meal, and their first glass of wine.”21
A caustic 1933 article in the North American Review criticized the idea of honeymooning, suggesting it was engineered to keep couples away from each other more than together. Travis Hoke wrote that the practice was new because in the past there had been nowhere to go, and travel had been historically unpleasant anyway. He joked that during what he called the “Coy Age,” it bordered on scandalous for brides visiting Niagara Falls to witness the indecently named Devil’s Gorge, Cave of the Winds, and Maid of the Mist, their very monikers meant to “stir the nuptial pulse.”22
Hoke’s sarcastic essay of 1933 did hit on a topic contemplated now as then: that honeymoons, featuring attractions and entertainment, are instruments of distraction, driving attention away from an embarrassed bride and staggering the forced intimacy of new marriage. Hoke wrote that honeymoons actually served to “keep newlyweds from knowing each other for as long as possible.”23 If elaborate buffets and hay rides were intentional diversions in the Poconos, then the falls at Niagara served the same purpose, providing visual spectacles and topics of conversation, as did the nightclubs of Idlewild and the comedy shows of the Catskills. The sumptuous buffets, room service breakfasts, and candlelit dinners would also fill that function, but with the addition of a certain indulgence and sensuousness.
As time marched on and the likelihood declined that the wedding night was the first time a couple had slept together, a new mentality in the Poconos embraced bawdiness, winking at the sexual revolution and promoting a sense of freedom fueled by a fancy-free vacation. The comedian Mickey Freeman, a frequent performer in Mount Airy’s Crystal Room, commented on the open sexual romping of the adults-only resorts, joking that the “food was lousy, but it was a legalized orgy.” Referencing the bawdy décor, he kidded that he used to tell the newlyweds that if they broke their mirrored headboard, they would have “seven years of bad sex.”24
As of 2016, Cove Haven (home of the first heart-shaped bathtub) offers a “Sinfully Sweet Package,” which includes chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne, the specialty tubs still going strong. The Garden of Eden Apple Suite has mirrored headboards and a fireplace and promises no windows for the “utmost in privacy.”
Princess Vicky (daughter of Queen Victoria) had a notable “going away,” which involved cannon fire and fireworks, with one hundred Eton schoolboys unhitching horses and pulling the bridal carriage up to Windsor Castle, where the newlyweds would honeymoon.25 A modern interpretation is the 2015 creation of a special police force intended to address raucous wedding celebrants in southern Russia. A custom of wild motorcades complete with gunfire has seemingly gotten out of hand; gleeful exhibitions originally meant to mark the joy of a new marriage have become threatening.26 While Americans do not generally shoot guns in honor of weddings, they do make a lot of noise and are not above making a scene in order to mark occasions.
Couples of the 1940s and 1950s could be counted on to don smart “going-away” outfits, and before the reception was over, the bride and groom would ceremoniously say their good-byes before leaving for their wedding night. In many instances, the vows were timed to correspond with the departure of a ship or a train, as it was then not common for couples to stay until the end of their reception. The “going away” was often when newlyweds formally thanked their guests, perhaps parceling out little candies or favors and saying their farewells.
It has become a customary nicety to host a meal in the late morning following a wedding, especially if out-of-town guests are staying at a common location. This gives the family and wedding party a chance to rehash the previous evening and to relax and eat without the stress of the day prior. There may be hangovers for some, and a heavy meal, hot coffee, and a little hair of the dog may be in order.
For those honeymooning at a Disney property, a glass slipper and tiara could be waiting on a hotel pillow, or mouse ears and rose petals might be spread on the king-sized bed. For the morning after, newlyweds might choose to host a brunch at Tony’s Town Square, a replica of the site where Lady (a cocker spaniel) and her sweetheart, Tramp (mixed breed), so affectionately shared spaghetti in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp (1955).
Disney promotes engagement packages timed to coincide with the nightly firework show, with perhaps a ring presented by an English butler, followed by a dessert buffet or hot-air balloon ride. Themed venues—such as a sit-down wedding reception with a view of Cinderella’s Castle—can feature everything from “shabby chic” or beachside casual to California, Moroccan, or Japanese cuisine, or even tea on a British-inspired croquette lawn. In Cinderella Dreams, Otnes and Pleck note that when people choose all-inclusive resorts for their honeymoons, they are expressing a desire to be somewhere exotic or new, yet safe, without contending with “lost luggage, rude cab drivers, or strange food.” It is a sure bet you can drink the water at Disney World.27
Whosoever pronounces the word truffle gives voice to one which awakens erotic and gastronomical drams equally in the sex that wears skirts and the one that sprouts a beard.
—Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin,
The Physiology of Taste, 182528
Purported aphrodisiacs include truffles, oysters, figs, beets, chocolate, artichokes, strawberries, asparagus, and honey. In actuality, health is the greatest factor in libido; thus fresh vegetables, fruits, and exercise are the true aphrodisiacs. Science does not support the existence of aphrodisiacs; yet there is undoubtedly a link to sexuality and luxurious indulgence. That an item is expensive or difficult to obtain lends to its romance, signaling that a lover worked hard to provide it and wants to share in its consumption.
An ancient Islamic recipe meant to promote male stamina prescribed a three-day regimen of twenty almonds and one hundred pine nuts with a cup of honey.29 Hippocrates prescribed honey for virility, and still another folk legend holds that Attila the Hun died after gorging himself on honey on his too-boisterous wedding night.
Chocolate holds a special place in romance, and legend has it that Aztec rulers ingested dozens of cups of a cocoa bean liqueur to service their harems and perform at orgies. In The True Story of Chocolate, researchers Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe debunk the notion that Aztec banquets were home to chocolate-induced orgies. Eyewitness accounts recorded by Bernal Diaz del Castillo seem less than reliable, and his tales of banquets featuring three hundred courses were surely exaggerated. Diaz wrote that he witnessed the Aztec elite drink fifty cups of chocolate at a banquet so as to ensure “success with women.” The Coes surmise that the introduction of sex as a factor in feasting owed to a Spanish obsession with aphrodisiacs. They also note that equal to Spaniards’ hunt for aphrodisiacs was their quest for laxatives. The conquistadors ate a diet heavy with meat and lard, with few vegetables and fruit, and they suffered for it.30
Chocolate has long been associated with sin and a sign of indulgence. Food historian Michael Krondl discussed the propriety of giving chocolate during courtship in the 1870s, as detailed by an etiquette expert at the time. A gentleman was instructed to give a woman a box of chocolate only if well acquainted, and a woman should never give a box of chocolate to a man, as offering something so sweet and decadent would surely appear wonton and promiscuous. She could, however, parcel out a few ladylike pieces of candy at a time.31
An ancient belief holds that food has attributes that affect one’s “humors,” thought to rule the senses, guided by the earth’s four elements. Meat was considered “hot” and lusty, and fish was considered “cool” and purifying.32 Chinese tradition also calls for a balance of energies, with certain foods considered either hot or cold. One Chinese aphrodisiac recipe called for ground peanuts, walnuts, almonds, and dates.33 Dr. John Kellogg treated nymphomaniacs by advising against “hot,” “overstimulating” foods like peppers.34
Pomegranates, strawberries, and nuts have long been lauded as fertility symbols, and fish have represented “plenty” and been featured in Jewish and Chinese weddings.35 The ocean is an obvious source of life, and during Lent, when fish were increasingly consumed, couples were thought to be especially amorous.36
Fertilized duck eggs, called balut, are eaten in the Philippines as a common street food and customary snack. The duck embryos are boiled in their shells at sixteen to twenty days old, at which point they have already developed beaks and feathers (the ducks would normally hatch at about twenty-seven days).37 When men consume them, they are thought to gain increased vigor, and balut is considered a powerful aphrodisiac. Particularly in the countryside, it is eaten at male gatherings prior to a wedding and often consumed with lots of alcohol.
Enhanced manhood and a magical cure for impotency have often been pursued to the detriment of animals. Bear bile extracted from gallbladders, powdered rhino horns, and tiger penises are examples of products marketed to increase masculinity, often illegally, with many untested or unlabeled. Supplements with names like Rock Hard, Mojo Nights, and Lighting Rod are sold to the hopeful. In 1995 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported findings in connection to four deaths attributed to the consumption of purported aphrodisiacs, all from a substance sold under the names Stone, Love Stone, or Black Stone. Supposedly made from the dried skin secretions of toads, the product was subsequently outlawed in the United States.38
Honeymoons were especially significant during a time when newlyweds, prior to their wedding, may not have experienced any form of intimacy. Many couples may never have even been alone together unchaperoned. Dining acted as a form of distraction and an amusement with which to ease a potentially awkward situation. Honeymoons have long reflected how Americans choose to spend their leisure time. Couples committed to an expensive vacation in an exotic locale because the occasion was the inimitable honeymoon.