She Sure Knows How to Pick 'em

24-year-old Alison Smith wed for the fourth time on Friday.

It was the latest in a bizarre series of marriages for the young mum.

Alison's ex-husbands include a man who eloped with her own mum, a bigamist and a pal who stood in for her fiance when he jilted her the night before the wedding.

Alison was reportedly "delighted" when asked to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of her mother and ex-husband.

But Pat and George's wedding was called off after officials discovered the groom was marrying his mother-in-law, which is against the law.

Staff from Arbroath register office stepped in at the last minute, citing the Marriage Scotland Act 1977, which states that you cannot marry a former spouse's mother unless your former spouse is dead. [Link]

Ambushed at the Reception

A divorced dad attended the wedding of a cousin's daughter, and almost ended up in an arranged marriage.

An aunt approached, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked me to join the family in a side room. When I entered, the men patted me on the shoulders and the women proceeded to tell me that the lady I had been seated next to had decided that I would be an acceptable husband for her! I was then told they would make all the wedding arrangements as quickly as possible.

Here's part of the response from Thursday's Dear Abby column:

At first, I thought you and your family came from some other culture. Then I called you, just to make sure, and learned that you are third-generation American. It served to remind me that people need to be careful how hard they shake the family tree because it can cause the nuts to fall out. [Link]

They'll Be Sequestered for the Duration of the Honeymoon

They met last year during a murder trial in New York, and now Traci Nagy (alternate juror No. 3) and Jonathan Cinkay (juror No. 6) are getting married.

They picked up their marriage license last week, and Queens Supreme Court Justice Daniel Lewis, who presided over the case, is to marry them next month.

"Some juries are serious, some are somber, but this jury seemed like it was full of beaming, happy people," the justice said. "I didn't imagine they were all playing matchmaker." [Link]

The defendant was convicted and will not be attending the ceremony.

A Marriage Service for Dumb Lovers

John Cordy Jeaffreson's 1873 book Brides and Bridals tells of a chatty woman and the husband who would never interrupt her.

On the fifteenth day of February, in the eighteenth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, a singular wedding took place at Leicester between Thomas Filsby, a deaf and dumb man, and Ursula Bridget, a hearing and talkative spinster. The Prayer-book requiring that the promises of marriage should be exchanged in spoken words, the clerical and civil authorities of Leicester were unable to say how the speechless person could be married to his spouse in a satisfactory manner. In their perplexity they applied for instructions to Thomas, Bishop of London, and Commissary John Chippendale, D.D., who disposed of the difficulty by devising a marriage-service for dumb lovers. By their directions the matrimonial rite was performed, and Ursula Bridget made the bride's promises in the usual manner; but the speechless groom declared his desire and purpose by the following signs. Having first embraced Ursula with his arms, he took her by the hand, and put the nuptial ring on her finger. He then laid his right hand significantly upon his heart, and afterwards, putting their palms together, extended both his hands to heaven. Having thus sued for the Divine blessing, he declared his purpose to dwell with Ursula till death should separate them, by closing his eyelids with his fingers, digging the earth with his feet, as though he wished to make a hole in the ground, and then moving his arms and body, as if he were tolling a funereal bell.

It was kind of touching until that last bit.

Don't Get Cold Feet in Virginia

Six months after a young man in Virginia called off his wedding, the cops showed up at his mother's door.

"What's he done?" asked the bewildered mother.

"He got a marriage license and didn't return it," the deputy replied. "Do you know where it is?"

The mother supposed that her cold-footed son, just wanting to forget the whole marriage thing, had just thrown the license in the trash after the wedding was called off.

"I guess we just threw it away," the mother said. Then she hastened to add, "But it was never used."

"That's a legal document," the deputy said. "He can go to jail for not returning it to the court." [Link]

Lucky in Love (They Hope)

Last year, no one wanted to have a baby on 6/6/06. This year, everyone wants to get married on 7/7/07.

[W]edding planners and venues have reported a startling rise in the number of couples who have booked weddings — especially in Las Vegas — on July 7, 2007, many of them having done so in the belief that 7-7-07 is a date with luck written all over it. [Link]

Love, Colonial Style

Folks in East Hartford, Connecticut, want to re-enact the 1661 wedding of William Pitkin and Hannah Goodwin—"East Hartford's most famous colonial couple."

The town's Historical Society and Friends [of Center Cemetery] say they would be most pleased to have a couple who are planning a real life, present-time wedding, to join their festivities. A wedding service will be donated by a Justice of the Peace who is a direct descendant of William Pitkin and Hannah Goodwin and who will be performing the service in the costume of a time long ago. [Link]

Use This Method Only If You're Stumped

Here's an extreme way to establish the marriage date of your ancestors: chop down their "wedding pair" and count the rings. This is from a story on a Dogwood Festival in Connecticut.

In keeping with the botanical aspect of the festival, visitors will take in views of the spectacular copper beech tree on the green-listed in Connecticut's "Book of Noble Trees" as well as a number of "wedding pair" matching antique trees, a custom dating back to the 1600s and 1700s to mark weddings of our ancestors. [Link]

Woman Driven to Marry to Drive

Gertrude Don Angelo née Mansfield had to remarry her husband of 59 years to prove that she no longer uses her maiden name.

The Don Angelos were joined in holy matrimony on Oct. 11, 1947, at St. Sylvester's Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., but the couple never obtained a certified state record of their union. They always had a certificate of marriage from the church, but that wasn't good enough when Gertrude, 76, tried to renew her driver's license late last year.

So after 59 years of marriage, the couple came to an awkward realization: They needed to be married once again, simply to get their hands on a state document. [Link]

Not the Best Man For the Job

Chris Adams thought he was marrying Gemma Mortell on Valentine's Day. But upon checking the marriage certificate after their honeymoon, he discovered that he had actually married his best man.

Gemma had mistakenly signed her name in the 'witness' space - and best man Paul Hickleston had put his signature where the bride's should have been.

Chef Chris said: "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what we'd done. I've known my best man for over 20 years and he's a great guy - but I don't want him as my missus." [Link]

For Better or For Hearse

More details have emerged about the cemetery wedding planned in Pacific, Missouri. Scott Amsler and his fiancée Miranda Patterson enjoy tooling around in a 1965 hearse named "Edgar."

She received Edgar as an engagement gift and had only one stipulation: The wedding had to be outside, in a gazebo.

Her worries were laid to rest while she and Amsler drove to her dad's house. While traveling on Interstate 44, Patterson spotted a gazebo on a hilltop, only to find it was in a graveyard. No worries.

"The view was just gorgeous," she said. "I said, `This is where I want to get married.'" [Link]

Cemetery Ceremony Leads to Slippery Slope

A couple has received permission to marry in a Pacific, Missouri, cemetery in September. Though neither has ancestors buried there, they reportedly found the setting "charming" and "peaceful." If one Pacific alderman has his way, it will be the first and last marriage solemnized there.

"Once you let that horse out of the barn, people could ask to do anything out there," said Alderman William Hohman. "You've got various cults running around, and we don't want to get into that nonsense." [Link]

A Wedding That Defied Comprehension

From the Brooklyn Eagle of May 19, 1896:

Whitestone, L. I., May 19—A peculiar marriage was solemnized here yesterday. The contracting parties were Corporal John Notter of the engineer battalion of Willets Point, and Miss Louise Schlungle of College Point. The ceremony, which was in the German language, was performed by the Rev. Frederick Kroencke, pastor of the German Lutheran church. The groom did not understand German, and the bride, who is not conversant in the English language, would not consent to having an English ceremony. Several times the groom interrupted the ceremony to ask the clergyman what he was saying.

They Wanted a Woonsocket Wedding

Some town clerks in Rhode Island are helping to investigate schemes in which U.S. citizens are paid to marry illegal immigrants. Woonsocket City Clerk Pauline Payeur has issued hundreds of sham marriage certificates, all the while keeping the authorities apprised.

Two years ago, she noticed couples flooding into her office to get married, and they were all coming from Worcester. "They're going by 20 town halls from here to Worcester, and they choose Woonsocket?" Payeur exclaimed. "Obviously they must have been trying to hide something."

[R]ight after receiving their licenses, the couples would call in a Woonsocket judge and get married on the spot, wherever they could find a space.

"It was ridiculous," Payeur said, sitting in her small office. "They'd get married right in the hallway, or at first they were right in here. After a while, we said, 'This is not a wedding chapel.' The phones would be ringing, I'd have two witnesses and the bride and the groom and the judge standing here. I mean, I'm a nice person, but after a while, I got to say!" [Link]

The Japanese Ruined Her Honeymoon

The day that Wilson and Roberta Ollis married was a date which will live in infamy.

While they were swapping wedding vows on Dec. 7, 1941 in Orlando, Fla., Pearl Harbor was under attack.

“They were bombing Pearl Harbor as we said ‘I do,’” Roberta Ollis said.

The couple didn’t find out about the attack until they were driving to Daytona, Fla., for their honeymoon. They heard the news of the attack on the radio. They also heard the call for all servicemen to report to their post, meaning Wilson, a staff sergeant in the Air Force, would have to cut his time with his new bride short.

“I would say it is interesting (being married on Pearl Harbor day),” Roberta Ollis said. “It was OK, I wasn’t really happy they messed up my honeymoon.” [Link]

A Whirlwind Romance

I love this story of a spur-of-the-moment marriage from Robert B. Fillmore's 1914 Gems of the Ocean. I can imagine my own New England Yankee ancestors proposing in much the same way.

When Ebenezer Hall lived on Matinicus, a great many years ago, there lived in the family a girl by the name of Dorcas Young, a sister to Hall's wife. Joseph Green was paying his addresses to Dorcas at the time. One night Hall invited some fisherman up to the house, so he said to Greene, "Joe, don't you and Dorcas want to get married?" "I don't know," says Joe. He started for the cow yard where Dorcas was milking the cows, and asked her if she thought they had better get married, that night. "Why Joe," says Dorcas, "I have not got any wedding gown." "Never mind the gown," says Joe, so they went into the house, Dorcas washed herself, put on a clean apron, stood up, and they were married, there being a justice of the peace among the crowd. [p. 24]

Couples Induced to Reproduce

In a PR event to boost their nation's birthrate, the Taiwanese government sponsored a joint wedding on Sunday for ten lucky couples.

At the wedding, under the government officials' witnesses, the ten couples announced that they were willing to cooperatively share the families' responsibilities and take care of their babies together in the future. Then the ten couples walked down the aisle with baby carriages containing their marriage certificates.

In the marriage certificate, each couple promised to have at least two babies. The first baby will be born before the mother reaches 30 years old; and second before the mother turns 35, the certificate states. [Link]

Canada's Bizarre Wedding Customs

Celebrating marriage by abusing the dead is evidently rampant in Canada. Two women were spotted Thursday stealing flowers from graves in an Ontario cemetery.

Cemetery operator Ray Pruellage said the flower bandits seemed to target expensive fresh flowers, such as roses and lilies, adding that the long-time cemetery supervisor Al Reid had never heard of such a thing happening before.

“They were two women in their '50's or '60's, so I am thinking maybe one of them had a daughter who had a wedding coming up and they couldn’t afford flowers. That’s the only thing that crossed my mind,” Pruellage said. [Link]

Meanwhile, Kelsey Ray Taylor confessed to setting fire to a church in Manitoba and then smashing headstones at a local cemetery with a sledgehammer.

"I did it for his wedding present," Taylor told provincial court Judge Krystyna Tarwid, claiming he was forced to smash the gravestones at the Roseland cemetery after his friend threatened to tell authorities about his role in the fire if he didn't.

"He wanted to see it in the paper, as in the destruction, I guess." [Link]

Shrouded in Style

German fashion designer Afra Banach has designed a line of shrouds for corpses with the most refined of tastes.

Banach talks about the tradition of people keeping their future shroud in their closet during their life time. Spouses even gave each other shrouds as wedding gifts in some Jewish communities, she points out.

A growing number of graveyards prohibit the burial of corpses dressed in everyday clothes -- for environmental reasons. As odd as it may sound, that's the reason why Banach's shrouds are biodegradable. [Link]

Couple Says 'I Do,' But They Don't

From the Davenport (Ia.) Daily Republican of Dec. 24, 1895:

In the county clerk's office at Lancaster, Ky., a couple from the country obtained a license to marry, and the Rev. C. M. Reed was called in to perform the ceremony. Another couple accompanied the bride and groom as attendants to the wedding. The minister made a mistake and married the wrong couple. Seeing his mistake, he called them back and married the right ones. The minister said the bridesmaid and best man answered the questions, and he thought them the interested parties.