Dressing for Posterity
Image created on Canva
Sometimes, I like to flip through our wedding album to look at the photographs and reminisce.
In 1976, powder blue tuxedos with wide, black velvet lapels were our choice for groomsmen outfits in a Spring wedding. Hardly noticeable in the pictures are Dad’s thick, heavy wool pants, out of place with the others’ lightweight airy ones because his tux pants had been forgotten at the rental shop’s dressing room.
My brother’s blue velvet bow-tie also stands out from everyone else’s black ones. The best man was supposed to have gotten the blue tie, but they had gotten mixed up in the chaos of getting dressed.
In one of my favorite photographs, my maid of honor and lifelong friend poses beautifully in her flower print Gunny Sax dress. We had curled each other’s hair in ringlets, put daisies in it, and applied glittery blue eye shadow. And our long, mascara-thickened lashes left residue on the lenses of our matching “John Lennon” wire-frame glasses when we blinked.
In our official wedding photo, my Prince Charming grins at the camera. He wears a white tux with satin accents and bell bottom trousers. It was not quite the denim suit we had both loved on the rack, but we’d admitted it just didn’t fit him.
It turned out the bell bottoms were a perfect choice, though, because they accentuated his knocking knees as I marched down the aisle to the organist’s strains of “Here Comes the Bride.”
I had planned to hem my overly-long dress of multi-layered, raw muslin before the big day, but I never got around to that. Wearing my tallest platform sandals, I teetered down the aisle beside Dad, who helped to steady me. Since I towered over the guests sitting in their pews, I got to experience a new point of view that day.
In the pictures taken after the ceremony, the wedding-party moms are nearly twins in their above-the-knee, polyester double-knit suit-dresses. But my brand new father-in-law had chosen to avoid the fashion game, and wore his conservative dark blue suit with a long, solid color tie.
By today’s standards, as the only one who is dressed “normally”, he could be mistaken for a time traveler.
Looking for more works like this one? Try these;
- The Photographer – Emotive Speculative Fiction
- The Soldier in the Snapshot – Memories in Poetry
- Winter Valentines – Love Poem
- A Rose for my Love – Romance Fiction
Penny Nolte
Penny Nolte is an author, artist, and educator who creates gentle, often quirky, narratives of family and place. After a decades-long break from storytelling, her new work is beginning to appear in print and online. It is included in The Avalon Literary Review and Dorothy Parker's Ashes.
