Events Calendar

Rituals of Romance: A History of Courtship and Weddings

Wednesday, February 25

6:00 pm

Location: Shorewood Village Center

A bride in a chaste white wedding dress, her face hidden behind a veil, bridesmaids in matching dresses, piles of wedding gifts...all of these have become such entrenched traditions of the wedding ceremony they seem eternal, yet these rituals have existed less than 200 years. Dr. Leslie Bellais will explore how these traditions emerged, and why they've fossilized into the wedding rituals we experience today. She will also compare wedding practices to the rituals of courtship, which in contrast have changed and evolved over time. 

Dr. Leslie Bellais knew she wanted to work in history as early as ten years old, when she visited Colonial Williamsburg with her 4th grade class. To meet this goal, she received a B.A. in historic preservation from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA and an M.A. in U.S. history from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where she also had a chance to intern with the museum curators and work as a historic interpreter (tour guide) in Colonial Williamsburg. She went on to work as a curator at the Hershey Museum of American Life in Hershey, PA, before becoming Curator of Costume & Textiles (later renamed Curator of Social History) at the Wisconsin Historical Society, a position she held for 29 years.

After retiring, she became a full-time graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, receiving her Ph.D. in U.S. history and material culture in 2022. For the next three years, she taught public history and historians’ craft classes in the history department at the University of Wisconsin. She now is fully retired, but still enjoys giving presentations and doing freelance work.

This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Shorewood Public Library.