David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow’s wedding turns their courtship into a public marriage, but its decisive image is not legal formality alone: it is a ceremony experienced by David as a dream and remembered through tears, farewells, and affection. The gathered family and friends, Dora’s grief for her father, and the couple’s departure give the event both its celebratory warmth and its note of loss.

Preparations and the Wedding Party

David sets out early to fetch Betsey Trotwood, whose lavender silk dress and white bonnet make a striking impression. Janet has dressed her, and Clara Peggotty is ready to attend the ceremony from the gallery. Mr. Dick is to give Dora away at the altar; Thomas Traddles joins them after David collects him at the turnpike. The preparations make the wedding a shared undertaking, with relatives and friends taking their places around the couple.

The carriage journey does not steady David. Although he is surrounded by the people who have come to support him and Dora, he feels so disoriented that he can scarcely believe what is happening. The ordinary world outside the carriage—people sweeping shops and going to work—seems remote beside the marriage that is about to take place.

The Ceremony

At the church, David’s account breaks into a more or less incoherent dream. The pew-opener arranges the party before the altar, and the clergyman and clerk appear as a few boatmen and other visitors gather. Miss Lavinia Spenlow cries first; Miss Clarissa Spenlow attends to her with a smelling-bottle. Agnes Wickfield cares for Dora, while Betsey Trotwood tries to maintain a stern expression through her tears. Dora trembles and gives her responses in a faint voice.

As they kneel side by side, Dora gradually trembles less, though she continues to clasp Agnes’s hand. The service proceeds quietly and gravely. When it is over, the party looks at one another with smiles and tears, and Dora breaks down in the vestry, grieving for her dead father. She soon recovers enough to join the others in signing the register. David brings Clara Peggotty from the gallery to sign it too; she embraces him and recalls seeing his mother married. The ceremony thus connects his new household to the family history he carries from childhood.

Farewells and Departure

As the party leaves, Dora insists on carrying Jip herself, lest he think she no longer loves him now that she is married. She looks back and tearfully asks that any occasions on which she has been cross or ungrateful be forgiven and not remembered. She then turns back once more to give Agnes her last kisses and farewells, singling her out among those gathered.

David and Dora drive away together. Only then does he feel that he has awakened from the dream and finally believe that his wife is beside him. Dora asks whether he is happy and certain he does not regret marrying her. Their exchange closes the event on the immediate assurance of their union, before David resumes the longer retrospective account of his life.

Narrative Form and Significance

The wedding’s dreamlike narration conveys David’s emotional bewilderment without making the marriage itself unreal: the register is signed, the witnesses take part, and the couple leave together. The ceremony’s public rituals are repeatedly crossed by private feeling—Dora’s grief for her father, Betsey Trotwood’s tears, Clara Peggotty’s recollection of David’s mother, and Dora’s affectionate attention to Jip and Agnes. In this way the wedding joins a new marital bond to the losses and attachments that remain present within it.