I had promised to write about our wedding day in honor of our anniversary last Sunday, but of course, we were too busy celebrating that day, and I wanted to spend my time with my dearly beloved instead of on the computer!
We had actually tentatively chosen our wedding date two years prior, before Ken went to Viet Nam. Why did we pick that day? It was Memorial Day Monday. Nowadays, Memorial Day is always on a Monday, but back then it was May 30, unless that fell on a Sunday. Then it was celebrated on Monday. Such would be the case in the year 1971.
I wanted to get married on a holiday Monday because I didn't like the idea of getting married on a Saturday, and then making a choice about whether to go to meeting the next morning. It seemed like most people did not get to meeting the next day because they were off on their honeymoon! Getting married on a Monday like we did solved that problem ever so nicely. And I just found out last year at convention that our friends Jim and Cheryl Hutchison did the same thing for the same reason! They were married the same year as us, and I think a week later on Monday.
In the late winter we began to make our plans. BUT we had one huge hurdle. My mother did not want to sign for us to get married since I was the tender age of 18. There was no way we could have waited another 3 years to get married. We had already waited long enough! I had worked for a year and we had saved money for our future.
Mother held off for a long time, and we figured we might have to go to another state to get married, but finally, finally, one day I "played a card" which was probably pretty cruel to her, and said, "Mom, you know that Daddy always said he would sign for me anytime!!" (He had told me that from the time I was about 12 and he was kidding me about getting me married off. My dad had died a year before that time, and we were still in grief over his sudden death, so that's why I didn't "play that card" until I had to!) Well, it worked, and my mom kinda teared up and said, "Well, okay." But she wasn't very happy about it, not that she did not like and approve of Ken, but I suppose she felt like getting married at 18 would mean I would be saddled with a family at a young age.
Another dream I had was that I did NOT want to be married in some Justice of the Peace's office. My dream was to get married in the house where we were going to live. In March, Ken put an ad in the paper: Wanted: house in the country to buy or an apartment to rent. One person who answered his call was the lady who lived in this house. He quickly found out she was his boss' daughter. She and her husband and 8 year old son had lived in this house for about 2 years. The husband was an insurance agent, though, and found he was making lots of trips back into town for his work (about 7 miles) and he wanted to move back into town. They hadn't put their house on the market yet, but agreed that we could come see it.
In those days you needed 25% down, and we figured we could afford a $3,000 down payment. This house was $16, 000. but with it came a refrigerator and a stove, so we figured we could afford it. We told them anything else they wanted to leave behind, we would gladly accept. We got lots of fiberglass drapes, a couch with matching chairs, end tables (still in use at daughter Jill's house!) and lots of other miscellaneous. All those things, and the generosity of others helped us "set up housekeeping."
We looked at the house in late March, and could arrange to move our things in the first weekend in May. We bought new bedroom furniture and new living room furniture and a set of lifetime stainless steel cookware. The living room furniture has long since worn out, the bedroom furniture is in use at Jill's house, and the cookware is still in use in my kitchen--it really is lifetime stuff, and the only thing we have done is replace some handles on it! Because it cost around $400, I always include it with the major expenditures of our early married life!
Since I had finally talked Mother into signing for us, we could go ahead with our plans to be married in our house. Large weddings and wedding gowns were frowned upon in those days, but nevertheless, I wanted a wedding and I wanted to wear a white dress that I had made myself for the day. I felt like I had earned the right and privilege to wear a white dress! It was white crepe, a shirtwaist style with a belt. It had tucks on the front of it with lace sewn into them. The skirt was pleated. The buttons were kind of irridescent when they caught the light or the sun. It had long sleeves with wide cuffs on it. It still hangs in one of the closets here, but of course I cannot get into it! I probably weighed about 135 on my wedding day.
Ken arranged for a Justice of Peace from Brockway to come to the house to marry us. They agreed on a dollar amount of $20, I think. Afterwards, when Ken went to pay him, he only charged $10! One of our jokes is that when he came to perform the ceremony, and saw the bride Ken was getting, he figured I was only worth $10! In reality, it might have had more to do with the fact that we had just bought homeowner's insurance from him!
We had wanted to have Gary and Donna Burkett, Ken's two cousins, stand for us. Gary was unable to make it, so we had my brother Ben for best man, and Donna for my bridesmaid. She wore a yellow dress with daisies on it. I had bought the same dress in my size and wore it as my "going away" dress.
We were married at 1:00 with close family members in attendance. Our invitations were for the reception which was to start at 2. The weather was a little overcast, but it did not rain. My cousin Gertie prepared the food for the reception. I think we had ham and other things. Our lovely wedding cake was made by a neighbor, Kay Yonker, from home who had made a cake three years prior for Ken at a Memorial Day picnic we had just before he left for the Army. Kay would not take any money for the cake and said it was my wedding gift. Her daughter and I had been playmates.
We planned to go to New England for our honeymoon. Nowadays I tell young people, don't go anyplace exotic or expensive on your honeymoon--you won't remember where you went anyways! Do the expensive stuff when you are in your right mind!
So, about 4 or 5 o'clock, I changed into my yellow daisy dress, (I don't think Ken changed his clothes), and in a flurry or rice throwing we left in Ken's navy blue Mustang! We had to stop about a mile away for Ken to reattach some wires, and empty stones out of the hubcaps, etc. We found a little note on the gas cap that said, "Congratulate this couple, they just got married!" We left it there, but only one gas attendant congratulated us. We had a nice trip to beautiful New England, but really, we were so wrapped up in each other, and so glad to be together all the time, that I do not remember much about what we saw!!!! It was great to get back home on Friday night, buy some groceries, and move on into married life in our big old house in the country!
The final part of my story of our day is to write about the morning of my wedding day. I had wondered where to read in the Bible, and somehow I found the last chapter of Proverbs and read it. It's a wonderful story about the qualities of a virtuous woman, and I knew I wanted to have those qualities both spiritually and naturally. I still read the chapter each year on our anniversary, and other times, too! Different verses have been special to me over the years of our married life. "worketh willingly with her hands", "she maketh herself coverings of tapestry" (when sewing my own clothes), "she maketh fine linen and selleth it" (weaving rugs and selling them, "she is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet"(making sure all the kids had warm clothes for winter) "she eateth not the bread of idleness (I plead guilty to not living up to that verse!) "in her tongue is the law of kindness(a good way to measure what I say, and still pleading guilty).
The verse that has been most important to me in the recent years of our marriage, now that the children are raised and we are a twosome instead of a sixsome, is verse 12: "She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life." This one comes to me often and has been a good motivator to me to take Ken a bowl of ice cream, a cup of coffee, or just in general do something nice for him. Sometimes we wives get crabby, and think to ourselves, "Why should I do that? What does he ever do for me? And on, and on, and on." We agree to love, honor, and cherish, and that is what I feel is so important at this stage of our marriage. It is unlikely that we have as many years ahead of us as we do behind us in our marriage, and I would like to cherish what we have while we have it! Love, really, is the idea of the thing....
2 comments:
sweet story :)
What a nice love story!
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