Shotgun Weddings

Shotgun weddings are in decline today, with pre-marital co-habitation commonplace and the stigma attached to illegitimacy significantly reduced, in most Western societies.

Many families and societies however, still believe marriage before baby carriage is the only option, and they frown upon unmarried mothers.

In these societies, a wedding involving a pregnant bride, with a subsequent 'honeymoon baby' helps to restore the family's honour.

Where did the concept of Shotgun Weddings Originate?

In traditional love stories, life followed an age-old pattern with a boy and girl meeting, falling in love then getting married. Next they would start a family and, of course, they all lived happily ever after.

But life is a whole lot more complicated than a fairy story and sometimes life throws out some curved balls, especially in the days before contraception was widely available.

Sometimes boy would meet girl, girl became pregnant, and boy would get a visit from his future father-in-law, complete with stern look, shotgun and plans for a fast wedding ... hence the shotgun wedding.

The father of the baby was 'persuaded' at gunpoint to do the decent thing and to turn up in his finest for a last-minute wedding, to preserve the honour of the girl and her family.

When the only alternative was certain death at the hands of an aggrieved father (or other male relatives), the merits of the proposed wedding often become very clear to the groom.

There don't seem to be any records to suggest numbers of historical weddings prompted by a shotgun, but threats of an enforced wedding as one of the consequences of unprotected pre-marital sex are still used today by some when discussing the increasingly complicated facts of life with adolescent boys.

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