Video and highlights from an aristocratic traditional Catholic wedding

Last updated on Jan 19, 2024 5 min read
Saint Mary’s Catholic Church, Kilsaran. National Inventory of Architectural Heritage

On the morning of July 6, a bride and groom prepared for their traditional Catholic wedding. The photographer and videographer were on hand to document an historic union of two Catholic families. The groom may even have had custom wedding booklets with the ceremonies in Latin and English, to assist the many guests who had never been to such old ceremonies.

The year was 1905, and the couple was John Crichton-Stuart and Augusta Mary Monica Bellingham.

John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute; Augusta Mary Monica (née Bellingham), Marchioness of Bute. published by Rotary Photographic Co Ltd. bromide postcard print, late 1910s. NPG x198198. © National Portrait Gallery, London.
John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute; Augusta Mary Monica (née Bellingham), Marchioness of Bute. published by Rotary Photographic Co Ltd. bromide postcard print, late 1910s. NPG x198198. © National Portrait Gallery, London. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw262978/John-Crichton-Stuart-4th-Marquess-of-Bute-Augusta-Mary-Monica-ne-Bellingham-Marchioness-of-Bute

The father of the groom, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, deserves an article in his own right, which I cannot provide here. Here is a memoir1 of one of his Benedictine friends, and a more recent biography2 of Crichton-Stuart III). John Chrichton-Stuard, was not only the richest man in the world at the time, but the first English translator of the Roman Breviary.3 4 5 The father of the bride was Sir Alan Henry Bellingham, who among other roles, served as Private Chamberlain to Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X.

Setting that aside…the most interesting thing about this wedding is that, despite being more than 100 years ago, we have wedding video footage, and a connection to a uniquely printed wedding booklet!

The Wedding Film

The National Library of Scotland has generously made available this historic film - likely the only film of its kind.

Screenshot from the National Library of Scotland
Screenshot from the National Library of Scotland

From the Library’s record:

Curator’s Note: This is a personal wedding film - a record for the participants of their happy event. Nothing unusual in that except for its date - 1905. This was the era of the itinerant showman and the entrepreneur who would run picture shows at the fairground and music and variety halls. It would be another five years before purpose built cinemas - picture palaces - start to appear…The aristocracy rarely engaged with cinema in this period…This then makes this film particularly interesting. An aristocratic couple engaging a film company to record their nuptials. It is - we think - one of the earliest - if not the earliest family wedding film in this country. It would be another 20 years before the first generation of home movie cameras came into use, and it pre-dates the cinema newsreel when celebrity weddings would be filmed for the news.

See the full video here:

The wedding of the 4th Marquess of Bute 1905. 1905, July 5th-6th. Black & white, 35mm. 2.30 minutes. Reference number: 6774. National Library of Scotland. https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/6774

The Wedding Booklet

The couple may have distributed copies of a wedding booklet, “The Marriage Service with the Mass for a Bridegroom and Bride.” The booklet was about 40 pages, and contained the English (and some Latin) for the wedding rite and the wedding Mass.

While I can’t be sure that the Butes had copies on hand, I believe that this booklet is worth mentioning because of its connection to the Bute family.

Cover page
Cover page

Note to the present edition: The translation from the Latin in the present edition of the Marriage Service has been taken with permission from a version privately printed by the late Marguess of Bute and that of the Nuptial Mass has been revised with much help from a translation from the same pen.
Note to the present edition: The translation from the Latin in the present edition of the Marriage Service has been taken with permission from a version privately printed by the late Marguess of Bute and that of the Nuptial Mass has been revised with much help from a translation from the same pen.

The Marquess in question is the groom’s father, The Third Marquess, who died in 1900. There are three dates connected to the booklet: the preface is dated 1895, the nihil obstat and imprimatur are 1905, and ’note to the present edition’ is 1909). It seems reasonable to infer that the Third Marquess had this wedding booklet printed privately in 1895, and then there was at least one subsequent edition that was made more publicly available via the publishers Art & Book Company in London.

I collect wedding booklets of this kind (see my scanned collection here6), so here are a few highlights I noticed:

  • Nihil obstat: Hamilton Macdonald, founder of the Guild of St. Stephen, for “rais[ing] the standard of altar serving”7
  • Preface: John Alphonsus Maria Morrall, OSB, author of Saints of the Order of S. Benedict8
  • The Gloria and the Credo are both included in the wedding Mass. At different times in the history of rubrics, both were excluded from the wedding Mass, so to see both in print and ’nihil obstat’d is unusual. Perhaps my history is incomplete!9

See the full program here:

The Marriage Service with the Mass for a Bridegroom and Bride. Westminster, England: Art and Book Company, 1895/1905/1909. https://archive.org/details/the-marriage-service/mode/2up?view=theater

Newspaper clippings and other photos

The Catholic Columbian, Volume 30, Number 24, 17 June 1905.
The Catholic Columbian, Volume 30, Number 24, 17 June 1905. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CC19050617-01.2.44&srpos=2

Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.), 15 July 1905. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.), 15 July 1905. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86069180/1905-07-15/ed-1/seq-4/

Embarkation of Marquis and Marchioness of Bute. Annagassen, July 6, 1905. in: James Blennerhassett Leslie. 1908. History of Kilsaran Union of Parishes in the County of Louth. Dundalk: William Tempest.
Embarkation of Marquis and Marchioness of Bute. Annagassen, July 6, 1905. in: James Blennerhassett Leslie. 1908. History of Kilsaran Union of Parishes in the County of Louth. Dundalk: William Tempest.

Kilsaran Roman Catholic Church. in: James Blennerhassett Leslie. 1908. History of Kilsaran Union of Parishes in the County of Louth. Dundalk: William Tempest.
Kilsaran Roman Catholic Church. in: James Blennerhassett Leslie. 1908. History of Kilsaran Union of Parishes in the County of Louth. Dundalk: William Tempest.

Sources

  1. Hunter Blair David Oswald. 1921. John Patrick Third Marquess of Bute K.t. (1847-1900). London: J. Murray. https://electricscotland.com/history/johnpatrick.pdf ↩︎

  2. Hannah Rosemary. 2012. The Grand Designer : Third Marquess of Bute. Edinburgh: Birlinn. ↩︎

  3. Shawn Tribe. “Internet Archive: The Roman breviary translated by John, Marquess of Bute.” New Liturgical Movement, December 15, 2006. https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2006/12/internet-archive-roman-breviary.html#.ZFppLnaZNPZ ↩︎

  4. Liam Affley. “The Marquess of Bute’s Translation of the Breviary.” Roath Local History Society, May 9, 2023. https://roathlocalhistorysociety.org/2023/05/09/the-marquess-of-butes-translation-of-the-breviary/ ↩︎

  5. “John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of the County of Bute.” The Peerage. https://www.thepeerage.com/p2387.htm ↩︎

  6. https://archive.org/details/@skabel?and[]=subject%3A%22catholic+wedding+programs%22 ↩︎

  7. “History of the Guild.” Guild of St. Stephen Brentwood. https://guildofststephenbrentwood.org.uk/the-history-of-the-guild/ ↩︎

  8. Ranbeck Aegidius and John Alphonsus Maria Morrall. 1896. Saints of the Order of S. Benedict. London: J. Hodges. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/21137748.html. ↩︎

  9. “Do you include the Gloria and the Credo in the Traditional Latin wedding Mass?.” Latin Mass Wedding, January 22, 2021. https://www.latinmasswedding.com/post/gloria-credo/ ↩︎

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Sharon Kabel
Sharon Kabel
Librarian; Nuisance

I like Catholic newspapers, amateur data visualizations, and walls of text.