We can thank Queen Victoria for the bridal tradition of wearing white at our weddings. It seems that before her marriage to Prince Albert, white wedding dresses were very rare ? hence all the earthy colors you see on the brides in all the Jane Austen movies. Royal brides typically wore silver (don't ask me why), but for some reason, Queen Victoria got a bee in her bonnet and chose white. Then she made her daughters wear white, and they made their daughters wear white, and their daughters made their daughters, and on and on and on.

Interestingly enough, the practice of having the bridesmaids' dress like the bride started long before Queen Victoria's time and somewhere in Europe. The theory was that if the bridesmaids all looked like the bride, then the evil spirits would not know for certain which girl was the real bride, and therefore, could not invade her soul on her wedding day and wreak havoc on the happiest of occasions. The good news was that by the middle of the 19th century, not only were evil spirits being thwarted at every turn, the wedding guests were all getting a giant piece of cake.

That's because Queen Victoria and her daughters were, apparently, women after my heart?those trend-starters also introduced big, huge, wedding cakes. I am talking really big here?Queen Victoria's cake was reportedly a whopping three hundred pounds (sounds like something I would bake then wonder what went wrong), and an incredible nine feet across. The cakes at her daughters' weddings got even more elaborate and very tall?one royal princess had a cake seven feet high. Mmm-mmm. Now that is my kind of wedding cake!