Everyone is doing it these days, but where did it all begin ?
You may just wonder how the cultural phenomenon that is the hen night experience came to be, what its origins were exactly. It might have been something to do with Cleopatra's best mates, Natasha & Tanya, organising a 'Bring your own asp milk' party by the Nile as a celebration of her impending wedlock with Mark Anthony. It may also have been partly a result of Eve's drunken 'Apple & Snake' theme weekend that preceded her tying of the leaf to the fortuitously heterosexual Adam. It may even have arisen as a result of Kathryn Parr's compromise of a Tudor Inn Crawl with her courtiers following her axe-happy fiancee, Henry VIII's, refusal to pay for her original choice of a gala ball...
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It could be elements of many other such unlikely avenues, however we at LNOF prefer to think that the modern interpretation came about as a result of one very disapproving Dutchman and some good-intentioned friends of his daughter. The man's patience was tested, apparently, when his daughter asked for permission to marry a poor miller, a suitor of great disappointment to the father by all accounts. The result was a big fat NO, to which the girl's non-judgemental friends congregated on her doorstep, laden with gifts and crafts, the purpose of which was to try and bridge the gap between the miller's possessions and the fuming father's hoped-for dowry. The shortfall was made up, the permission was granted, the marriage went ahead...and the concept of a hen night was born. Three cheers for a bit of Dutch courage!
As for the actual phrase of 'tying the knot', there are also many versions of how this originates. Perhaps the most charming that we've heard is the Swedish version, whereby illiterate sailors and soldiers of long ago would send a piece of rope to their sweethearts as a marriage proposal. If the rope, sent with two ornate knots in it, came back with those same knots tied in the middle then the serviceman could take it as a YES. Presumably, if the rope came back with some soap on it then the fiance's message could be interpreted as 'I might marry you if you bathe more often'!!!
While we're looking at key-phrase origins, it was common practice 4,000 years ago in Babylonia (just outside Stoke-on-Trent) that, for a month after his daughter's wedding, the bride's father would supply his new son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and, because the calendar month was a lunar one, the phrase 'honeymoon' was born. Both of George Best's previous fathers-in-law should thank their lucky stars that customs change as they do!
Quite how all these old practices have metamorphosed into the modern-day equivalent of L-plates, Salsa lessons and Quad biking in Nottingham is testimony to the Chinese whispers of social change.
The practice of women letting our best friends and relatives know how much they are loved though, just before they project themselves into the wonderful and frightening institution of marriage and all the possibilities which that entails - that doesn't change, nor should it; and that is why you are reading these pages, we imagine, in your quest to put together a special, hopeful occasion to match this special and hopeful person. And if you think putting one together is complicated, spare a thought for Cleopatra's guests: have you ever tried to milk an asp?!