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The Marry Merry Month of May
All of my life, there have been aspects of May that made it quite merry, indeed. As a child, it featured wonderful events like The Last Day of School! It also meant that winter might actually be over in our high-altitude Rocky Mountain valley. We’d experience snow flurries sometimes on Memorial Day, but Old Man Winter was no longer in charge. There were always newborn foals, and calves, and lambs to enjoy. My closest sister was born on May 23rd, just 15 months after I was born the year before. She was the fourth child and fourth girl for my parents.
We also have two brothers and two more sisters, but we older girls did the work for years: milking cows, hauling hay, branding, shoveling, etc. etc. We became known as “those Welch girls” who could throw bales up on the wagon and lift milk cans as well as any boys our age. And, I’m not sure that some adults even knew us individually by name.
In 1974 I officially became an adult (turned 21 on February 23rd) and I got married in May. Mr. CowGirl and I both grew up there in that little valley, so the wedding announcement list was rather lengthy. I was pretty much throwing this wedding together in about six weeks because we’d sprung our relationship on our families as a surprise. We had both ended up living in California at the same time, had become “an item” and then, decided to just head up to the homeland and tie the knot. Maybe I was the only girl/woman of my time who hadn’t planned her wedding gala fifty times in her imagination and needed all the fancy fixings. But, since we had an abundance of relatives, mostly living there still, we knew we should have an event for the celebration.
Now, I do need to back up a bit…I’d had a crush on Mr. CowGirl since I’d first laid eyes on him in 6th grade. Before that year, I’d attended a one-classroom school, out by the farms. His home was in “town”—pop. 2000. So, we had not come into each other’s orbit until we were 11. However, my affections were not reciprocated. He and I attended junior high and high school in our class of 130 students. Everyone knew everyone. He had a few girlfriends, and by the time high school was finished, he and a certain girl had been a couple for over two years. Yes, I dated and had a couple of pretty good boyfriends, but waaay back in my brain, he was still The One. But, I had absolutely no anticipation, whatsoever, that I would ever be The One for him.
I left for college; he went…I don’t know. I didn’t keep track. Turns out he attended college briefly, then joined the Navy, and after a year of schooling in Tennessee, was stationed in San Diego. Well, now it was two and a half years after high school. My college attendance lasted three whole semesters, and then my roommate and I decided that we should move to San Diego, where her family lived. You can see where this is headed, right??
Suffice it to say, our paths managed to cross through another mutual friend from high school, and [music plays…butterflies rush through the air…and birds sing] we ended up deciding that we should get married! After one date. Yeah…there’s more, but it doesn’t matter here.
Here’s where the Merriness comes in. We sprung this on our families. None of them had even been aware that we’d become reacquainted, and now we were going to pull an entire wedding celebration out of the hat; so everyone was rather off-balance. We got the announcements mailed, and the church reserved. I asked my uncle, the newly ordained bishop, (a lay official in the Mormon church) to perform the ceremony. He was quite nervous, and especially so because the groom’s uncle was the leading church authority in the whole valley, and would be there, too. My almost-twin sister was to be the maid-of-honor, and everything was set to go.
The wedding day came. We stood there in front of my nervous uncle for his first opportunity to officiate in a wedding. He looked into Mr. CG’s eyes, and asked, earnestly, “Do you take [my younger sister’s name] to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Mr. CG looked at him. There was a pause. Then he replied, in a calm, clear voice, “No. I want to marry [my name.]” The whole church erupted into laughter! I’m sure that my sister’s fiancée was also ready to object, if the groom hadn’t cleared things up first.
My poor uncle. This did not help calm him a bit. But! He took a breath, started the ceremony again, and this time used MY name in the vows. We successfully married one another and have lived happily ever after for 46 years today! And I’ve had a superb story to tell my students whenever someone has been peeved when I mistakenly called them by their sibling’s name, who had been one of my former students.
“Believe me,” I tell them, “I know that getting names right is really, really important.”
The bride and groom on May 17, 1974
Sister #1, the Bride (sister #3) and the Almost Bride (sister #4)
Published in Group Writing
Haha! At a friend’s wedding, High Episcopal, very formal, as the priest read the words, he asked “Do you, Alex, take Jane to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Alex clearly did not want to say yes to that. A hush fell over the congregation. Then suddenly the priest said “Wife! Wife!” and we all collapsed in laughter.
What a wonderful story! Happy Anniversary!
What a sweet story! And what a cute couple without a care in the world. Ain’t it grand being married a long time? Many congratulations to you and the Mr.
Terrific story–married just before us! I will chuckle for a while over that name mess up–very funny. Thanks.
Episodes like that are what make human events human events.
At our wedding one of us (now I can’t remember which one) tried to put the ring on the wrong hand.
At our daughter’s wedding, the officiant, also officiating his first wedding, forgot to seat the congregation, so everybody stood for the whole ceremony (which was rather brief).
As a generally clueless guy, I can imagine officiant becoming confused with you two pretty girls with similar hair styles (if somewhat different colors) in front of him (I assume Sister #4 was a bridesmaid).
Sister #4 was my maid of honor, and it was only she and I standing there, with the groom and his best man. But for our entire lives, my sister and I had just been “sister&sister” (our names) with no distinguishing between us, since we were always together, dressed in matching dresses, and the next two in a continuum of sisters…
And…I wanted to mention…That platinum blonde hair on my Almost-Twin sister was her natural color and it stayed that way her whole life. I’m sure people thought she worked on it at the hairdresser, but NOPE–she was a natural. I’ve never colored my hair, either, but it didn’t stay as blonde as it is in this wedding picture. But, around age 45 or so, I started getting silver streaks in it! So, it’s lightened up again! Just not blonde…
By June 10th, we’ll have managed 42 years.
Happy Anniversary!
Happy Anniversary! Mine is in 8 days, and will mark 24 years!
I also have sisters, only three, and most of the adults just knew us as the Boland girls.
I remember one high school teacher, also the football coach, who always called me only by my last name. He and I had a lot of verbal repartee and once in class I challenged him to remember my first name. He froze, looked around at the class and said, “I can’t remember, but I know you’re not your sister Colleen.” The whole class erupted because I am indeed my sister Colleen…
Mrs. Tabby’s best friend in college (whose efforts to recover from an unpleasant romantic breakup unwittingly caused Mrs. Tabby and me to meet each other) was one of triplets, with one of the other triplets identical to the friend, and the third triplet looking nothing like the identical pair. The identical twins both worked at the same retail drive up photo processing booth (for the young’uns, ask your grandparents) and had a lot of fun confusing their regular customers.
Happy Anniversary! Great post. Reminded me irresistibly of this:
YES!! Well, things can always be worse, can’t they!!??
Lucky you! I’m still waiting . . .
Looks like you’ve unintentionally issued a “Show us your wedding photo challenge” to your fellow Ricochetti. I’ll dig into our family archives and see what I can
Photoshopcome up with . . .Both you and @rightangles have funny wedding stories!
Okay, I asked my wife to find a wedding photo she likes. That was yesterday . . .
Do your part to share a bit of humor, dry or rich, high or low brow. Stop by and sign up for a day in “A Merry Month.”
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