For, on the contrary, the comedians reflect on those who revel at their marriages, who make a great ado and are pompous in their feasts, as such who are taking wives with not much confidence and courage.

Thus, in Menander, one replies to a bridegroom that bade him beset the house with dishes,...
Your words are great, but what's this to your bride?
But lest I should seem to find fault with those reasons others give, only because I have none of my own to produce, continued he, I will begin by declaring that there is no such evident or public notice given of any feast as there is of one at a marriage.

For when we sacrifice to the gods, when we take leave of or receive a friend, a great many of our acquaintance need not know it.

But a marriage dinner is proclaimed by the loud sound of the wedding song, by the torches and the music, which as Homer expresseth it, The women stand before the doors to see and hear.
(Iliad, xviii.

495.) And therefore when everybody knows it, the persons are ashamed to omit the formality of an invitation, and therefore entertain their friends and kindred, and every one that they are anyway acquainted with.
This being generally approved, Well, said Theo, speaking next, let it be so, for it looks like truth; but let this be added, if you please, that such entertainments are not only friendly, but also kindredly, the persons beginning to have a new relation to another family.