The Times They Are A Changing...

I took this afternoon off to start packing up our house for the upcoming move. I decided to begin by dealing with items we won't need to use for the next couple of months. This brought me to start going through all of my photo albums and stacks of unorganized sentimental stuff. I don't know about you, but once I open up a photo album I haven't looked through in a couple of years I could be there for hours. Not much packing going on actually....

When I got married, my Mother gave me an incredible gift. She had worked for who knows how long on a three ring binder filled with info on my family. It was like a gigantic family history scrapbook. It had an ancestry tree, family recipes from great-grandparents kitchens, photos and I think most importantly interview type portions for a lot of my relatives. They each told stories about growing up, important people and events in their lives, memories of their neighborhoods, and of course getting married! It brought me to start thinking about how weddings have changed so much over the years. Are they better now? Somehow looking through these photos of my grandparents and parents weddings it makes me think maybe not.

Since blogs are really public journals in a way, I thought I'd write a couple of posts about different generations of weddings based on my own family.

First Up: My Mom and Dad (cue the cheers and applause) : May 7, 1967

My parents (Wayne and Christine) got engaged on Christmas Eve, 1966 after dating for about 10 months. They had originally planned to get married in the Autumn of 1967, however this was during Vietnam. My father was in school part-time and was not eligible for a deferment from the draft. By April of 1967 it looked pretty certain that he was going to be shipped off to Asia. Their choices were, put off the wedding or speed up the timeline. They chose to move the date up. After just one month of planning they were married at St. Mildred's Church in Dundalk, Baltimore.

My mother wore a dress that my grandmother had bought for her at a local department store sample sale for about $50. It was a size 8 and had to be taken down to about a size 1. Their wedding party included a Maid of Honor, Best Man, one bridesmaid and an usher.

My mother met with a local florist who was very "traditional." She told my mom that a brides bouquet couldn't contain any color. My grandfather had to step in and say, "If she wants daisies, she's going to have daisies!" She got her bouquet of daisies, roses and stephanotis.

Due to the rush of getting the wedding together, there were no invitations. My grandparents called people. No RSVP cards or direction inserts ... just a phone call. Their reception was at "some hall" that neither can remember the name of, but it was nice considering the short notice. Their honeymoon was a short roadtrip away in nearby Virginia.

The bottom line.... they've been married for 40 years. The wedding was planned in 30 days and didn't have all of the bells, whistles and big budgets of many of today's events, but I still love looking at the photos and knowing what they mean to me. Oh, and for all of the bride's out there using all the wonderful shades of yellow that have come out this season, my Mom had it first (ha ha!) You gotta love the bridesmaids dresses!

Here is a board I came up with inspired by my parents:

top row: www.brides.com, www.neimanmarcus.com, www.ephemera-press.com
middle row: www.brides.com
bottom row: www.brides.com , www.hellolucky.com