A secondary meaning of Old English ealu, the ancestor of Modern English ale, was āfeast, banquet,ā at which the drinking of ale was a prominent activity. There were a number of these feasts and banquets that survived into the 19th century, but the oldest and best-established was the bride-ale, or wedding feast, attested in Old English as brydealu. In Middle English the ale half of the word had lost its stress and was associated with the noun suffix āal (as in funeral) and the adjective suffix (as in parental). By the 18^th^ century, bridal was perceived primarily as an adjective, as it is today.
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First Known Use of bridal
Noun
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above