Religion: Confetti

Church councils in England were busy last fortnight with a small but distressing problem: the practice of confetti-throwing at weddings. Chief objection to it: it litters up the church. Rev. E. G. Hall, rector of Friern Barnet, thought he had found a way to control confetti. He would charge five shillings ($1.25) extra per wedding, to be forfeit should any confetti be thrown. At Hatneld, Herts., it was proposed to charge ten shillings. Pontificated Rev. Oscar Stanway, vicar of Claygate, Surrey: “Confetti-throwing is meaningless and messy!” Even worse, said he, is the prevalent practice of throwing imitation rose petals: they show up much more. “Never heard an argument in favor of confetti,” said Rev. F. L. H. Millard of St. John-the-Evangelist, North Brixton, London. It was all right, he thought, to throw real flowers (an old village custom), because young ladies liked to pick them up to tuck under their pillows, and old ladies could press them in books.

Shaking his head gravely, the old verger of a parish church in London said it sometimes took half an hour to pick up all the confetti after a good wedding. Croaked he: “In the old days when people used to throw rice, we had a vicar who would go outside before a wedding and confiscate all the bags of rice he could and give them away afterwards. But you cannot make a pudding out of this stuff!”