Theme – Masquerade
This is a “Masquerade Wedding.” Guests will receive a Carnival Mask upon arrival. We humbly request that all guests wear the mask provided to add to the day’s flavour and festive atmosphere. Dress is formal. In addition, guests may dress or accent their wardrobe in the green and/or purple theme colours (optional, but encouraged).
There is a large, free parking lot across the street. When you walk in from the parking lot, use the CHAPEL entrance (towards the top of the hill). It will save you from having to climb a few flights of stairs inside. There is a roundabout at that entrance for you to drop off passengers at the door there too (for the ladies in heels!)
Thank you for helping us to make our wedding day more festive and memorable.
Masquerade-themed weddings are not for the bashful bride and groom. The couple most likely to make the most of a masquerade theme have an inner theatrical flair, and a love of the dramatic. Masquerade colours are rich and vibrant. They might include jewel tones, emerald greens, and royal purples. Black makes a great backdrop for masquerade colours, while gold and silver act as accent colours. Neutrals and earth tones, however, are all excluded from the big, bold masquerade pallette.
A masquerade ball (or bal masqué) is an event which the participants attend in costume wearing a mask. Such gatherings, festivities of Carnival, were paralleled from the 15th century by increasingly elaborate allegorical Entries, pageants and triumphal processions celebrating marriages and other dynastic events of late medieval court life. Masquerade balls were extended into costumed public festivities in Italy during the 16th century Renaissance (Italian, maschera). They were generally elaborate dances held for members of the upper classes, and were particularly popular in Venice. They have been associated with the tradition of the Venetian Carnival. With the fall of the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century, the use and tradition of masks gradually began to decline, until they disappeared altogether.
They became popular throughout mainland Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The “Bal des Ardents” (“Burning Men’s Ball”) was intended as a Bal des sauvages (“Wild Men’s Ball”) a costumed ball (morisco). It was in celebration of the marriage of a lady-in-waiting of Charles VI of France’s queen in Paris on January 28, 1393. The King and five courtiers dressed as wildmen of the woods (woodwoses), with costumes of flax and pitch. When they came too close to a torch, the dancers caught fire. (This episode may have influenced Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Hop-Frog”.) Such costumed dances were a special luxury of the ducal court of Burgundy.
John James Heidegger, a Swiss count, is credited with having introduced the Venetian fashion of a semi-public masquerade ball, to which one might subscribe, to London in the early eighteenth century, with the first being held at Haymarket Opera House. Throughout the century the dances became popular, both in England and Colonial America. Masquerade balls were sometimes set as a game among the guests. The masked guests were supposedly dressed so as to be unidentifiable. This would create a type of game to see if a guest could determine each others’ identities. This added a humorous effect to many masques and enabled a more enjoyable version of typical balls.
A new resurgence of masquerade balls began in the late 1990s in North America and are still held today, though in modern times the party atmosphere is emphasized and the formal dancing usually less prominent. Less formal “costume parties” may be a descendant of this tradition.
“Regency” romance novels, which are typically about Britain’s upper class “ton” during the 1800s, often make use of masquerade balls as settings, due both to their popularity at the time and to their endless supply of plot devices.
As mentioned before, Masquerades are the centers of multiple operas. The musical and movie The Phantom of the Opera has a very important scene in the story line take place at a masked ball. This scene (in the film) features inventive choreography and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
And now…the wedding of John Chmela and Claire Ufnal will become part of this tradition of royalty and festivity. Your invitation welcomes you to become a part of this centuries old tradition. Please enjoy our unique and historic masquerade wedding.