What is a traditional wedding? Most young women will paint a visual picture of a lavish church ceremony with a large number of friends and family in attendance. There will be multiple bridesmaids, a ring bearer, a flower girl, a bride in a long white dress followed by a large catered meal with dancing.
Historical circumstances and cultural ideals have played an important role in shaping Montana weddings. A traditional wedding is actually a fairly recent event in Montana. Geography, transportation, ability and willingness to adapt, population, cultural traditions and plain lack of or abundance of money all played an enormous part in yesteryear’s weddings.
Whether a couple marries in front of two witnesses or their family and friends, weddings are worth remembering. And wedding stories are worth telling because even the simplest story opens a window into the past. “They provide insight into the past while asking viewers to reflect on what changes in wedding traditions can tell them about the larger cultural changes.”
In the 1860’s life was about survival. Quickly assembled earthen roofed houses, tents, and wagons provided living accommodations for the newly arrived. For those who fell in love in those rugged times a territorial wedding meant unique adjustments to a girl’s dream wedding. Montana’s isolation could easily mean that a wedding would be held in a log cabin far from the brick church or the parlor of a nicely furnished house. Details of marriage ceremonies in the 1860’s were not reported due to a sense of modesty. They were considered too private to expose to publicity. Newspapers did print announcements that provided suggestions about the weddings.
There was a severe lack of ministers, priests and rabbis to solemnize the vows. The territorial law however provided that any judge, justice of the peace or minister could perform a marriage ceremony. The only legal requirement was public recognition of the marriage.
Post wedding meals with elegant suppers, sumptuous receptions with the luxury food items were few and far between. Most often not, there were no fancy parties. The food was just adjusted. There was generally no fancy pastries, but only some spiffed up every day food; if the bride and groom were lucky.
The marriage between Henry Plummer and Electa Bryan at Sun River provides a rich window in time of a territorial wedding. On June 20th, 1863 “all the inmates of the fort assembled in the best room to witness the marriage by Father Minatre of the St. Peter’s Mission, of Miss Electa Bryan to Mr. Henry Plummer.” Merchant Francis Thompson served as Electa’s ‘bride maid’ wearing “moleskin trousers neatly foxed in places, a black cloth coat and vest and buffalo skin shoes.” The best man was Joseph Swift, Jr. who wore “sheep’s gray pants boxed and patched with buckskin, a pretty red and white sash and a grey flannel shirt and moccasins, both of which were made for one foot.” Electa’s wedding breakfast consisted of buffalo hump and bread made of corn meal.
Imagine marrying, as did Miss Leonard and Mr. Langford on a Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m., October 24. Your wedding guests will throw a large, formal ball the following Wednesday. After your church ceremony, you invite a few select friends to call at your new house for a small pleasant informal gathering. Toward the end of the evening, however, “a crowd assembles with trumpets, bells, kettles—anything in fact that will make a noise. It is kept up, until the bridegroom appears, takes the crowd to the nearest barroom and treats.” This custom, called a chivari, remained common in Montana well into the 1930s and was a community’s way of welcoming young people to the institution of marriage. The rise and fall of chivaris reveals just one way weddings have changed from earlier times.
The Friday June 7, 1935, wedding of Butte miner Tom McHugh and store clerk Jule Harrington suggests another. The couple originally planned to marry on June 6, but then someone told Jule that Father Nolan, her parish priest, “was graduating the eighth grade at our Mass.” When she called the priest, he confirmed the rumor. “So,” she remembered, “I asked him if we could have another Mass, and he said there was only one. I asked for another day and he said okay. We couldn’t have Wednesday because Ceil and Vince Petrino had that, so we had to take Friday. . . . We ended up at Gamers for poached eggs for our breakfast—no meat on Fridays then. Prohibition was getting over, so our reception was cheese, tuna fish, and moonshine. We had the reception up home, and it was a beautiful day.”
No priest today would ever suggest combining a graduation and a wedding, which makes the story of the McHughs’ wedding both revealing and thought provoking. How much else has changed over the last seventy-five years? There is no one single historic set of Montana traditions, but very few Montana brides experienced the large formal celebrations most people imagine when they think of a traditional wedding.
Montana territory lacked the close-knit bonds that helped regulate ‘sparking’ and prearranged marriages, unlike an established town on the East Coast or more settled communities. This helped provide more freedom for women to decide who to marry.
The men usually came west to make something of themselves and seek their fortune. This might have left behind a loved one. Therefore months or even years of correspondence were common before it was considered proper to marry or the men found the money to bring the young bride out west. Mining frontiers greatest scarcity was young singe women. These eligible women were often snatched up quickly, as the male-female ratio was easily 2-1.
Eastern immigrants often looked to their hometown for brides once they felt financial able to obtain a bride. Other European immigrants had more luck finding spouses in older ethnic enclaves in North Dakota or Minnesota. Other men had no one and had to rely on their friends to find prospective mates. At times saloon girls did provide eligible wives.
In unusual circumstances when ministers were rare, the ministers would marry multiple couples at a time. In 1878 near Miles City a minister officiated and united 100 couples at once. For the most part weddings were a short civil ceremony and not very elaborate. The middle class insisted on a more formal exchange of vows and a more elegant after repast after the ceremony.
In an attempt to lure people to Flathead county Fair in 1905, one of the largest oddest weddings took place in Kalispell. In the autumn of 1905, the Kalispell Bee advertised a wedding contest, a chance for one lucky couple to marry on the grandstand of the Flathead County Fair. The brave pair would receive over two hundred dollars’ worth of prizes donated by Kalispell merchants, including “everything from the county license to the wedding dinner . . . a picture hat for the bride, furniture and bric-a-brac, groceries, dream robes, even medical attendance one year after marriage.” Three couples submitted their names, and the paper kept the winners secret, promising only that they were “well-known, longtime Flathead County residents . . . young and good looking, both of them, and their appearance under the wedding bells will be a grand surprise on Friday afternoon.”
In this reality show of yesteryear, four thousand people turned out to witness the marriage between Maggie Pierson, “attired in a pink silk gown and . . . a large white picture hat,” and farmer Harry E. Crossley and to offer their congratulations in the fair’s floral hall. Few Montana weddings were as public, as quirky, or as much of a spectacle as the Crossleys’ fairground ceremony. More typically, Montana brides and grooms married at home or in church sanctuaries, parsonage parlors, or judges’ chambers.
Weddings also offered the opportunity to take family and community photographs. Large and unwieldly photography equipment meant brides and grooms often documented their vows with a special trip to a photography studio sometimes days or weeks after the actual event. By the 1940’s photography was a hobby for many. Couples often skipped an official photography studio for the local with a camera. At today’s weddings the photographer is on site and heavily involved in the activities and is still often the results of a friend’s camera.
Weddings provided an occasion not just for families to gather but for community to gather. They became a social event for the entire countryside. Everyone was invited and they came. There were no invitations with an RSVP. If you showed up you were in. Weddings were a perfect opportunity for everyone to catch up on gossip, see the newest family additions and satisfy the social starved rural inhabitants.
The optimism of the 1910’s and 20’s passed into war, drought, and depression. Weddings became a much simpler affair. During the war years, rumors emerged that married men would receive military deferment. So an epidemic of weddings took place. Unfortunately the rumors were false. It was common for the bride to be far younger than the groom.
Stay tuned to see how the railroad affected Montana’s weddings and visit some of the unique marriage laws over time.