Day 11 - Thursday, August 27, 2009

Today, I thought I would write a little about a wedding that holds great significance for me personally. In my mind and heart, the bride is royalty, a princess to me... my mother, young and beautiful in 1964, and still so beautiful to this day.

Mother and Daddy were married Thanksgiving weekend in 1964 in Savannah, GA. The ceremony was held at Grace United Methodist Church. The attire and style of the wedding was pure 1964. Hopefully I can gather some more pictures and post those as well, some that are in color are truly amazing.

In the picture to the left, Mother is carrying a white bible, on top of the bible is a cluster of white Japhet orchids, Lily of the Valley (all the flowers are fabric, faux, or silk flowers... basically artificial) and trailing ribbon tied around more sprigs of Lily of the Valley. Not to fear! This is not her wedding day bouquet. The picture featured here is for the newspaper announcement. Remember when they used to do that in the Sunday paper?

The bouquet she carried in the wedding, well, I love it, and know it well as it remained in a box (the same box used by the florist to deliver it to the church in 1964!) We are a big keepsake bunch of people... locks of hair, first baby shoes, school year books, pictures galore. So, the bouquet, or what was left of it remained boxed in the attic until the early '90's before a big clean out of the attic took place. The picture on the right is Mother and Daddy just after their wedding, here she carries her real bouquet.

Mothers bouquet contained the following... white Fuji mums (w/pink dyed centers), white cymbidium orchids with pink throats, silk Lily of the Valley, seed pearl sprays, ivory satin ribbon, #3 and #9 sizes, and a multitude of tulle puffs. All of these were wired and taped together to form the bouquet. I studied that thing many times thinking, "Someday, I am going to make these!"

Like I said, the bouquet is no more. When I knew it, the Fuji mums had died and fallen away decades before. But, the tulle puffs, the ribbon, and Lily of the Valley sprays remained, discolored a bit from years of storage. In keeping with the times, the center of the bouquet was a corsage that was pinned into the bouquet. After the reception the corsage center was removed for the bride to wear as she departed for her honeymoon. Mother's was no different in this case, as the ribbon, tape and wire from that center portion corsage survived as well as a keep sake and was kept in the same box with the bouquet, along with what was left of the boutonniere that my father wore for the wedding, a white carnation with silk Lily of the Valley sprays, wrapped in black tape. Even though this keep sake is gone as a whole, I did manage to snag pieces of it for posterity. When my brother was married in 2002, I made his boutonniere with a couple of the Lily of the Valley sprays and wrapped the stem with the ribbon from Mother's bouquet. That boutonniere, that featured a single gardenia, sits in Mother's china cabinet... again as a keepsake.

Today's post is dedicated to the Queen of my heart, my mother. A beautiful bride, an exemplary parent, a dedicated and faithful Christian, and a very much loved grandmother.

I love you Mama! Terry.

Royal Wedding Tidbit for today... The wedding cake of The Queen Mother and King George VI (Queen Elizabeth II's parents) was 9 feet high and weighed 800 pounds!