Brit picking tip for writing Harry Potter fic authentically #11 - and this one is specifically important for anyone planning to write a "Jily gets married" fic but is generally useful for getting any ship's wedding right.
First up - "bachelorette parties" are not called bachelorette parties. They are called "Hen dos" (a "do" is a word for a party). Back in the day this would have been relatively quiet, the night before the wedding and have been spent at someone's house and would include mums/ grandmas and close friends. These days they tend to be entire weekends, months before the wedding, and it's normal for the bride and her friends (less likely to include a grandma) to go to another city to go clubbing (York is very popular for hen dos for some reason - maybe because it's a classy city but as it's in the north it's relatively cheap... but the ancient and very beautiful city of York is made a lot less classy by the drunk hens vomming in the gutters every Saturday night). The bride will wear a veil and L plates and inflatable willies will be in abundance.
"Bridal showers" are not a thing (and neither are "baby showers" when you get that far - though there is some cultural creep entering in but certainly not when Lily or even Ginny would have been having babies).
Secondly - and why this is so pertinent in Jily fics - A "Bachelor Party" is not called a "Bachelor Party" it is called a "Stag Do". If you are writing the marauders celebrating James' last night of freedom and he does not spend it entirely as Prongs, with a traffic cone dangling off his antlers, you are writing it wrong. Of course James spent his entire stag do as a literal stag, while the others tried to sneak him into night clubs and feed him shots. Do not - I repeat Do Not - miss out on this excellent bit of word play by writing about a "bachelor party".
Again, back in the day stag dos would have been simpler than they are now but they did tend to include going out, where the bride stayed in. They were the night before and many a groom has nursed a horrendous hangover at his wedding, or nearly missed it entirely because he woke up handcuffed to a lamp post wearing nothing but his underwear. Nowadays, like the brides to be, the grooms tend to celebrate their stag do a few months earlier and so are a lot less likely to be hungover on the day itself. They go away for a weekend - Prague is a particularly popular destination due to cheap flights and cheaper alcohol - and get very drunk. The British have a terrible reputation as holiday makers in Europe, and a lot of that is down to the behaviour of stag dos.
When it comes to the wedding itself these have changed a lot in the nearly 50 years since Jily got married because... capitalism, but there are still some ways things are done that differ from American weddings.
Firstly - there is no such thing as a rehearsal dinner. And there is no equivalent to it. The night before the wedding is not part of the wedding unless some kind of hen or stag do is taking place (likely much quieter than the official one months before). As I said earlier, back in Lily's day, she would have spent that night at home with her mum and her bridesmaids.
Secondly - there is no such thing as "groomsmen". There is a Best Man, who stands at the front with the groom and is in place before the bride gets there, and then some other friends/ brothers might have been co-opted into being "ushers" which means they direct people which side of the church to sit on depending on whether they are there for the bride or groom. They then play no further part in the wedding.
Thirdly - Bridesmaids follow the bride down the aisle, rather than go ahead. Traditionally they are there to carry her train, hence why they are at the back. They don't walk up the aisle with a groomsmen because there are no groomsmen, they just follow the bride. If there is a suitably aged little girl or boy in the family, they might be a flower girl/ page boy who will toddle up the aisle ahead of the bride, but the official bridesmaids walk behind. When they reach the front, the maid of honour will take the bride's bouquet and then they will all go and sit in the front row.
Fourth - Vows. Personal ones. We don't do them. Just the thought of them makes me want to cringe inside out. There are the official words that have to be said, and the signing of the register - a good wedding lasts ten minutes (sadly most of them go on a lot longer than that). The officiant might waffle on a bit about love or the meaning of marriage, and someone might do a reading (not the bride or the groom but someone close to them) but heartfelt personal declarations of your love story and feelings for each other? That is Not. British. (I would actually have to hide under my chair in embarrassment and bite down on something if anyone tried to do that).
And speaking of the officiant - Fifth - the officiant must be either a recognised religious leader (vicar/ imam/ rabbi etc) or they must be licensed by the council. "Registrar" will be their day job. There is a very limited number of people who can perform weddings, and you can't just get yourself a license to do it. The marauders cannot marry Jily, an official Ministry registrar has to do it.
Sixth - the meal at the reception is called the "wedding breakfast". It is not an actual breakfast and it takes place in the afternoon. The reason it is called a breakfast is because traditionally the bride and groom would have fasted before their wedding and the meal afterwards was when they broke that fast. The meal will either be a three course one, where everyone selected their options when they accepted their invite, or a buffet (I think these are less common now but would have been more common in Jily's day). A wedding buffet will definitely involve vol-au-vents. The meal will come with wine and a glass of champagne for the toast though other alcoholic drinks would have to be purchased by the guest.
seventh - speeches. Traditionally, the Best man makes a speech, the groom makes a speech and the father of the bride makes a speech. More frequently these days the bride herself might make a speech but then again few people are queuing up to speak in public if they don't have to, so many women eschew their feminist principles and stay silent to avoid the horror of addressing a large group of people. Bridesmaids do not make speeches. (Obviously traditions are much looser than they used to be and anyone and everyone can make a speech if the couple asks them to, but the traditional lineup was Best man, father of the bride and groom).
Lastly - the evening do. Once the reception is over the dancing (and drinking) starts. It's falling out of fashion now, but my parents are of a generation (the marauders generation) where you got changed between the reception and the evening do. Weddings in Britain take place in the afternoon (up until 2012 you could not get married after 6pm) and so women wear dresses appropriate for day wear, the type you would wear to church or a garden party. For the evening do they then change into evening wear - the type you wear to a night time party. Back in Jily's day the women would have worn a flowery knee length frock to the ceremony and reception and then a little black dress to the evening do.
Dancing is officially opened by the bride and groom having their first dance. There are no official father-daughter dances or mother-son dances.
Open bars can be a thing but guests assume they will have to pay for drinks until they find out otherwise. Official last orders at a bar is 11pm, so if the place the reception was held didn't have a late license, that would be the end of the night (back in Jily's time I don't think late licenses existed so 11pm might have been the end of the night anyway). Most places that host weddings will have a late license which means they can serve alcohol between 11pm and 5 am. Most British weddings will not go on until 5 in the morning! A lot of people will be gone by midnight anyway, the last stragglers will go at about 2 am. In Jily's time, the bride and groom would have left early to go on their honeymoon while everyone else continued the party, these days the bride and groom see it out until the bitter end (unless they get taken to bed early because they passed out drunk).
I'm not sure if this is the case everywhere so I will add it in case - while dancing is opened by the first dance and that will be to whatever song the couple chose, every dance floor everywhere is closed out by "New York New York". I don't why, it just is the last song.
Obviously, as you might be writing a magical wedding, there will be some differences - we see an example of a magical wedding in Deathly Hallows and that is the best way to get the magical vows and dress code etc correct, but it is still built on a base of British wedding tradition and assumes people know Ginny followed Fleur down the aisle and not the other way around or that Fleur and Bill's personal vows to each other weren't cut to avoid taking up page time, they simply didn't happen.
I hope that's helpful for anyone trying to write a HP wedding fic and if you have any more questions please feel free to ask but please please please, if you only take one thing away from this, do not neglect the word play and comedic potential inherent in James "Prongs" Potter going on his stag do.
