Small menu cards printed in silver are put on all the tables.  Sometimes these cards have the crest of the bride’s father embossed at the top, but usually the entwined initials of the bride and groom are stamped in silver to match the wedding cake boxes.

Example: 

[Illustration: 
Bouillon
Lobster Newburg
Supreme of Chicken
Peas
Aspic of Foie Gras
Celery Salad
Ices
Coffee]

Instead of bouillon, there may be caviar or melon, or grape fruit, or a puree, or clam broth.  For lobster Newburg may be soft-shell crabs or oyster pate, or other fish.  Or the bouillon may be followed by a dish such as sweetbreads and mushrooms, or chicken pates, or broiled chicken (a half of a chicken for each guest) or squab, with salad such as whole tomatoes filled with celery.  Or the chicken or squab may be the second course, and an aspic with the salad, the third.  Individual ices are accompanied by little cakes of assorted variety.  There used always to be champagne; a substitute is at best “a poor thing,” and what the prevailing one is to be, is as yet not determined.  Orange juice and ginger ale, or white grape juice and ginger ale with sugar and mint leaves are two attempts at a satisfying cup that have been offered lately.

=THE BRIDE’S TABLE=

The feature of the wedding breakfast is always the bride’s table.  Placed sometimes in the dining-room, sometimes on the veranda or in a room apart, this table is larger and more elaborately decorated than any of the others.  There are white garlands or sprays or other arrangement of white flowers, and in the center as chief ornament is an elaborately iced wedding cake.  On the top it has a bouquet of white or silver flowers, or confectioner’s quaint dolls representing the bride and groom.  The top is usually made like a cover so that when the time comes for the bride to cut it, it is merely lifted off.  The bride always cuts the cake, meaning that she inserts the knife and makes one cut through the cake, after which each person cuts herself or himself a slice.  If there are two sets of favors hidden in the cake, there is a mark in the icing to distinguish the bridesmaids’ side from that of the ushers.  Articles, each wrapped in silver foil, have been pushed through the bottom of the cake at intervals; the bridesmaids find a ten-cent piece for riches, a little gold ring for “first to be married,” a thimble or little parrot or cat for “old maid,” a wish-bone for the “luckiest.”  On the ushers’ side, a button or dog is for the bachelor, and a miniature pair of dice as a symbol of lucky chance in life.  The ring and ten-cent piece are the same.

If a big piece of the wedding cake is left, the bride’s mother has it wrapped in tin foil and put in a sealed tin box and kept for the bride to open on her first anniversary.