Wedding, n.
Etymology: [AS. wedding.]
Nuptial ceremony; nuptial festivities; marriage; nuptials. Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth and of Boaz. Longfellow.
Note: Certain anniversaries of an unbroken marriage have received fanciful, and more or less appropriate, names. Thus, the fifth anniversary is called the wooden wedding; the tenth, the tin wedding; the fifteenth, the crystal wedding; the twentieth, the china wedding; the twenty-fifth, the silver wedding; the fiftieth, the golden wedding; the sixtieth, the diamond wedding. These anniversaries are often celebrated by appropriate presents of wood, tin, china, silver, gold, etc., given by friends.
Note: Wedding is often used adjectively; as, wedding cake, wedding cards, wedding clothes, wedding day, wedding feast, wedding guest, wedding ring, etc. Let her beauty be her wedding dower. Shak. Wedding favor, a marriage favor. See under Marriage.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for wedding; he lists it under marriage.
Where he writes about it:
Wedding denotes the ceremony, with any attendant festivities, by which two persons are united as husband and wife, nuptials being the more formal and stately term to express the same idea. — from marriage