After the wedding ceremony was complete, the priest would bless and distribute some wine, cakes, and sweetmeats, which were then handed round to the company, including the newlyweds.
Since usage of the phrase cannot be shown to date back earlier than the first half of the 19th century however, a pre-16th-century origin seems unlikely.
The Oxford English Dictionary does not record any occurrences of the phrase "wedding breakfast" before 1850, but it was used at least as far back as 1838.
[a] The author of Party-giving on Every Scale (London, 1880) suggests the phrase may have evolved fifty years earlier:[3] The orthodox "Wedding Breakfast" might more properly be termed a "Wedding Luncheon," as it assumes the character of that meal to a great extent; in any case it bears little relation to the breakfast of that day, although the title of breakfast is still applied to it, out of compliment to tradition.
As recently as fifty years ago luncheon was not a recognised meal, even in the wealthiest families, and the marriage feast was modernised into the wedding breakfast, which appellation this entertainment still bears.The Compact Oxford Dictionary[4] lists the phrase as only "British", and the Merriam-Webster online dictionary[5] does not list it at all.