MOSAIC MONDAY - THE WEDDING

It is Mosaic Monday hosted by Mary at Little Red House.
Please check out her blog for a list of this week's participants; plus take a look at the wonderful portrait photography that she is doing these days.

Not only is it Mosaic Monday, it is also Labor Day and our 51st wedding anniversary. Last year on our 50th I posted about marriage - click here if you are interested. This year, I thought I would talk about The Wedding! Weddings were different back in the 1950s in our community than they are today. Even a large wedding was simple. Ceremonies usually took place on Sunday afternoon as most people worked on Saturday. They were held in the bride's church, which was usually decorated with lots of fresh flowers. I suppose our wedding was considered quite large with 300 guests, but there was no fancy meal; just a reception at our house with cake, nuts, mints and punch. My parents had a large house with a finished basement and a beautiful backyard, and could well accommodate that many people. It was a gorgeous, September day.

In those days, the marriage was between a husband and a wife, but THE WEDDING was between the bride and her mother. Even the announcement in the local paper of the engagement had only a picture of the bride-to-be, and the up-coming nuptials were announced by only the parents of the future bride. Funny as it may seem, the groom was almost an after thought. All he had to do was show up the day of the wedding with the ring!!!!

In our small town, brides almost always had a formal, studio picture taken the week before the wedding that was then used in the newspaper with the details after the wedding.

Mother and I did all of the planning together, and I only remember having a small disagreement about the plates to use for the cake. With so many people, she thought we should use paper plates; but even then I loved dishes. You can see in the bottom left picture that I won out. We used Mother's large collection of Fostoria glass plates. She hired someone to wash dishes as they were used! Thank you, Mother - to this day I love using her Fostoria. I remember how beautiful and young my Mother looked that day - pretty enough to be the bride herself as she had just turned 39 years old the day before the wedding.

I'm eternally grateful that Bob showed up that day with the ring. I can't imagine what the last 51 years would have been like without him. It has been a wonderful life!!