Mom's Wedding Dresses

Most girls, I'm told, dream about their wedding day. Not about the groom - sometimes, he's just an afterthought, a place filler - but about the flowers, the shoes, the hairstyle, the decorations, and most of all, THE DRESS.

My mother didn't. She wanted to be married, and have children, but BEING married was the important thing, not the single day of GETTING married. The ceremony was just what you did so that you could be married.

Part of that was, undoubtedly, the fact that she was raised by a woman who was raised by parents who came from The Old Country; they were not very frivolous. Part was that she was born during the Great Depression, and was a teenager during the rationing of World War II. Extravagant gowns were not on anybody's agenda. Part was just her own personality.

I was filling out family history paperwork when Mom was in her 70s, and I asked her for the date of her wedding to her first husband. She gave me a date in August of 1950. "Hmm," I said, as I wrote it down. "I thought that the date on the back of the photos was in September."

"It was," she said. "That was the second wedding."

Um - what? Second wedding? Why were there two?

"We eloped. Frankie was afraid to tell his parents." He was an only child of very Catholic parents. "We had the second wedding so they'd get to see him married in a church. He didn't want to hurt their feelings."

"Are you kidding? Are you joking? Why did you never tell me this before?"

"It wasn't important."

So funny, my mom. So practical.

Look at how gorgeous she was on that second wedding day.

The man on her right is Frankie, her husband. He was handsome, charming and funny, a fire fighter. The maid of honor was named Glenna. She didn't write down the best man's name, and I never asked.

Here's another of the couple:

Such a stunning couple. They made beautiful babies, my brother Gary and my sister Lynne. Hanging in her home, Lynne has the professional portrait of Mom and Frankie cutting their wedding cake.

Frankie was an alcoholic, and the marriage didn't last.

There are no photos from her wedding to my father. There were 5 people in the room - the minister, Mom, Dad, and my aunt and uncle as witnesses. There was no reception; the four of them ate out, then Mom and Dad drove home. That was exactly the way Mom wanted it - no fuss.

When I got to be a teen, I asked Mom what happened to her wedding dress, the one she wore when she married my dad. "I gave it to you kids (me and my sister June, 3 years my elder) to play dress up in. It got ruined, and I threw it out years ago."

"What? What did you do that for?" I was outraged.

"You thought it was so pretty. And I was never going to wear it again. Someone ought to get some use out of it."

I was determined to be scandalized. What if one of us wanted to wear it ourselves? "It's highly unlikely that you ever would. It would be outdated, if it even fit."

I sputtered. She didn't understand my reaction.

"Well, what did it look like?"

She shrugged. "It was white."

"Long? Short?"

"About mid-length."

I, who tend to be too attached to my Stuff, couldn't quite believe her low key attitude.

Time passed. The lesson was absorbed years ago. Things aren't important; people are. Weddings are nice, but the marriage is the important thing.

Those are the lessons exemplified by my mother's wedding dresses.