Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’ from Lohengrin and its Use as a Wedding March

The ‘Bridal Chorus’ of Wagner’s 1850 opera Lohengrin is one of the most recognizable pieces of music in the world. This article explores how it became so inextricably associated with wedding ceremonies – real ones, or on stage and in film. Furthered by its use at several British royal weddings the music was especially popular at wedding ceremonies in Britain and the USA. Notwithstanding that the chorus was usually performed in an instrumental arrangement, its attractiveness as wedding music was strengthened by various new English texts, its popular title of ‘Here comes the Bride’ deriving from a 1915 silent film. On a different level, this study contextualizes and evaluates the long-lasting criticism of the use of Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’ at wedding ceremonies. Proportional to the decline in its actual use, this criticism has now mostly gone; yet, the ‘Bridal Chorus’ remains as the archetypical music to represent the arrival of the bride.