bed, the guests offered dishes to the newlyweds and quickly ate with them before leaving them alone. Due to the ritual's importance, specially decorated wedding beds were sometimes borrowed from friends, family or neighbours. The bedding eventually became merely symbolic, with the bride's parents covering the newlyweds with a blanket and then uncovering them. Legal consequences The original purpose of the bedding ceremony was to establish the consummation of the marriage, without which the union could be annulled. The legally binding nature of the ritual was unclear to many, particularly to lower classes. One marriage in Britain was annulled on the pretext that the bride had run away within 15 minutes of the ritual, and in another case, a clandestine marriage was made public when the pregnant wife shared her husband's deathbed. Public bedding in 18th-century Britain was widely believed to give additional legitimacy to the marriage. In Scotland, although marriage was formed by simple consent and required no formalities or consummation, the bedding rituals were widespread but unstructured; a couple simply wanted someone to see them in bed together. A couple could also be pressured into marriage in this way: a person stumbling upon an unmarried couple in bed could pronounce them man and wife on the spot. In medieval Scandinavia, the bedding ceremony was of great legal importance. Laws in many Swedish provinces regarded public bedding as essential to the completion of a marriage, but the legal importance later diminished due to new royal laws. In Iceland, a marriage was only valid if it included the bedding ritual witnessed by at least six men. In the case of royal marriages, the ceremony took on added significance. In popular culture The bedding ritual has featured in popular culture for centuries. It has been hinted at in The Penny Wedding, an 1818 painting by David Wilkie, and possibly also in the homonymous 1819 painting by Alexander Carse. Numerous songs also make references to the ceremony. In the television series Game of Thrones, a bedding ceremony features in several episodes. It is conceived as a "Westerosi tradition following the wedding feast", wherein the attendees forcibly undress and carry the newlyweds to their bed. The intention is to "celebrate a marriage's consummation". See also Beilager Consummation Yichud Notes References Bibliography Wedding traditions Beds Sex and the law