Today, most brides and grooms cut their wedding cake in full view of their friends and family, and then slip away to cross the threshold of their new home—or hotel room—in private. Long ago in England, however, these two events were one and the same, as wedding guests crumbled infare cake over the head of the bride as she and her husband crossed the threshold of their new abode. This shower of cake crumbs was intended to ensure fertility and bounty, and thus the original cakes were made of hearty grains such as wheat or oats. This English custom traces its origin to ancient times when Romans sometimes solemnized marriages through the rite of confarreatio, a word literally meaning to unite with grain-cake (the far in the middle of confarreatio is the Latin far, meaning grain, a word that also appears in farina and farrago). In contrast, the English infare literally means to go in, deriving as it does from the word in and from the Old English vetbfaran, meaning to go or to travel. Before it was applied specifically to cake, infare could also refer to a feast provided for guests when someone, newly married or not, took possession of a new home.