Forgotten Wedding

I had forgotten all about my Aunt Barbara’s 2nd wedding to Ernest Smith until a friend sent me these strips.   It took place the day after Christmas, December 26, 1966.  You can see the Christmas tree in the first frame, first strip.  My grandmother never put the tree up before Christmas Eve.  The marriage was short lived and ended after several years. Barbara became Cardinal Nandi and went on to successfully manage the Bookstores and Cultural Centers of the Shrines of the Black Madonna.

You can click to enlarge the pictures a bit.

At the church.
At the church.
The reception.
The reception on Atkinson at my Grandmother’s house. There I am in the first frame, between my cousin and my sister
More from the reception. There I am in the first frame, between my cousin and my sister.
More from the reception.

23 thoughts on “Forgotten Wedding

  1. I remember that wedding! OMG! Those glasses I have on! LOL And Blair in his overalls! I remember Barbara separating from him one time because they were going somewhere and he wanted to put the dog in the trunk! I can remember her saying that that was just Barbaric! lol

  2. Weddings are (usually) such happy occasions & I think it sad when the marriage doesn’t last. But life has a habit of turning corners sometimes & at least there were the happy times first.

    1. And sometimes happy times afterwards. I agree, though, that it is kind of sad to see the smiles and happiness and know it didn’t last.

  3. What interesting strips of positives, rather than negatives. I’ve never seen them alighed side to side like that. The only film strips I’ve ever used were always alligned up and down. And of course the knowledge of what was going to happen down the road made these photos all the more poignant.

  4. Barbara was/is lovely. Too bad the marriage didn’t last. I’m wondering what’s going on in the 2nd strip – 2nd and 5th photos. What is that man showing the groom? Is it a projector? or… The groom looks so interested. He’s engrossed. Maybe this has something to do with why the marriage didn’t last. Shouldn’t he have been more involved with the wedding reception? Just speculation.
    Nancy

    1. Those Henry and Hugh, two of my photographer uncles looking at a camera. The groom was not in either of those photos..

  5. On another subject – How long did she leave the Christmas tree up? If she pulled it down before the end of the month, then it wasn’t up for long?

    1. After New Years. Probably until January 6 but I can’t remember exactly. We put ours up a little earlier – Christmas week – and took it down about the time we went back to school, soon after New Year. they were up about 2 weeks or the 12 days of Christmas. Long enough for me.

  6. Wow, that must have been a delight to receive them. Nice collection. I’ll bet Barbara had a very interesting and exciting life after her marriage!

  7. It looks like that wedding was a fairly subdued affair. Good to hear Barbara did well afterwards.

    1. I believe it was mainly the families. I guess we were a fairly subdued family back then. It was her second marriage. They were in their 40s.

  8. I think it’s unusual to marry at Christmas isn’t it? Usually people like to spread the reasons to celebrate. I wonder if that made any difference to the marriages’s longevity.

  9. My parents got married on Dec. 26th too…boxing day in Canada. I know of other couples who made the same choice. Because families got together for Christmas it was convenient to schedule weddings while everybody was in the same place. Your grandmother would be shocked to see the Christmas trees up in September, like last year in our local Costco.

  10. These were a bit like a slow motion video. My dad is a photographer and he used to make many contact prints like these. He arranged the cut up film negatives on a single sheet of photo paper so that he could chose which image was suitable to be properly enlarged and printed.

  11. I don’t think I’ve ever seen contact strips before. Interesting. And I enjoyed reading the comments about Barbara’s wedding too. Funny.

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