Many circumstances shaped Montana’s weddings. The state’s historic ethnic diversity had an immense impact. Etiquette of the time also played a large part, but the coming of the railroad transformed not only Montana but brought all the amenities of the Eastern life to the West. Hothouse flowers from Portland and Minnesota could now decorate the most elaborate wedding festivities. The latest Bridal fashions could be had more easily. This even affected the wedding gifts. Now choice wedding gifts began to appear, transported from the coast or back East.
So weddings became dependent on the train schedules. Late trains delayed the start of weddings if attendees, especially family of the wedding couple, did not arrive as scheduled. Wedding times often were set according to the train schedules so the couple could meet guests or leave for their post wedding party. Sometimes the train schedule meant whether the minister arrived on time or not at all. Late trains often meant the couple could not leave as expected for a honeymoon.
“A very elegant wedding held in Great Falls in 1906 was also timed around the train. Miss Bishop and Mr. Giboney married unfashionably early at the Episcopal Church – the wedding had to be early so that the young couple could get off on the 9:30 train. The bride’s mother set her watch exactly with her husband’s so that the march could be started on the dot, punctual to the minute. The Bishop-Giboney wedding was a large one and the people began to arrive at 7 a.m.”
Couples could jump on a train and head to a larger community and be married. Lutheran pastor S. J. Fretheim lived in Plentywood in northeastern Montana at the height of the homesteading boom. He calculated between 1910 and 1919 he officiated at over 300 weddings, 250 of which were held in the parsonage parlor. Often couples traveled alone to obtain his services, perhaps catching a ride to town on the milk train before walking to his house and knocking, unannounced, at his door. Small ceremonies and large receptions was the norm.
One of the ways trains most affected Montana weddings was by increasing the number of newcomers. Thousands wanted to claim a homestead. Homesteading attracted families as well as single men and women. More singles meant more weddings. Some marriages centered around the ability of a female to file on a homestead which enriched the situation
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.
In 1935 Montana joined the list of states to require a medical examination as a prerequisite to marriage. It was instituted to check the spread of TB and venereal diseases.
The “gin marriage Law” was written to prohibit the clerk from issuing marriage licenses to intoxicated applicants. It was a poorly written law that imposed unreasonable testing requirements. Therefore some married without a license. Most headed to Wyoming and Idaho. Businesses in Montana lost so much business because weddings in Montana practically ceased to exist, that they launched a campaign to repeal the law.
In 1961 the Montana legislature enacted a law requiring couples to apply for marriage licenses five days before the wedding. The waiting period was reduced to three days in 1975 and lifted in 1987. Intending to encourage couples to think twice before they married, the law did not change the trends that inspired it.
For some couples, the wedding itself, perhaps followed by a restaurant meal, was the extent of the ceremony. Many, however, returned home to a wedding feast, lovingly prepared by their mothers and sisters. Fretheim remembered, “Wedding receptions in early days were among the main social events of the community. . . . Sometimes, both wedding and reception were held at home.
Camilla Anderson, whose family homesteaded in eastern Montana, remembered her sisters’ double wedding, held June 1, 1910: Everyone was invited to the wedding, and about that many came. They came on horseback, in buggies, and in wagons. . . . Two huge tables were set up, seating possibly thirty to thirty-five people.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most middle-class Protestant couples married at the home of the bride’s parents. In preparation, the bride’s mother and sisters would decorate the house with flowers, set the table with their best china and linens, and cook the celebratory meal.
Overall Montanans primarily took their cues from the “Old Country” when it came to planning weddings. In fact, in 1920 two-thirds of Montanans were immigrants or the children of immigrants. In rural Europe, from whence many Montana immigrants came, workers interspersed long grueling days in the fields with raucous community celebrations.
Russian-German weddings could last up to three days. At the wedding reception of John and Christina Krenzler, schnapps and beer flowed liberally. The couple married on February 22, 1912, at the homestead. Dinner was served from noon to nightfall continuously. Everyone wore his Sunday-go-to meeting best.
In Anaconda, Croatian immigrants continued the tradition, with “two- to three-day celebrations of feasting, drinking, singing, and dancing.” Red Lodge Finns abandoned the three-day festivities that marked nuptials in rural Finland but still sometimes celebrated marriages with large processions escorting bride and groom to the site of the wedding. In 1898, for example, “fifteen bridesmaids and a like number of grooms in-attendance,” led by the Miners’ City Band, marched with coal miner Gust Sikkila and Alena Bloom “from the home of the bride to the Finnish Temperance Hall, where Reverend Alek Sandstrom married the couple.”
Whether accompanied by a procession or celebrated with lefse and lutefisk—or tuna fish and moonshine—weddings of old rarely matched our current cultural ideal of a “white wedding.” Gowns were designed for double duty. Little money meant many brides chose dresses that they could recycle into church or everyday clothes. Most just wore a blouse and skirt, as they couldn’t afford a fancy dress to be worn only once. Often the wedding gown was designed with the idea of refashioning the garment into a more usable dress once its’s initial function was completed.
Only the wealthy could afford a fancy “white wedding.” Such weddings existed, but they were reserved for the wealthy. “Margaret Carter, sister of attorney (and later Montana senator) Thomas Carter, wore a cream-colored silk dress trimmed with Spanish lace, a court train, and a long tulle veil when she walked down the aisle of the Helena cathedral to marry millionaire mine owner Thomas Cruse in 1886. However, brides like Mary Sheehan Ronan were more typical. Ronan wore a home-sewn pearl gray dress for her 1873 wedding to Helena newspaper editor and later Indian agent Peter Ronan. ‘I had dreams of a white dress with a train, a bridal veil, and a wreath of orange blossoms, but when the time actually came I considered conventional things inharmonious with the simplicity and unconventionality of our way of living,’ she recalled.”
Fantasies of white weddings grew during the twentieth century. They were “fueled by happily-ever-after Hollywood movies, society-page reports of celebrity nuptials, and a growing wedding industry (heralded in 1934 by the first magazine devoted entirely to wedding planning).” However, the stark realities of the Great Depression and World War II meant that such weddings were out of most Montanans’ reach.
As one Brockton, Montana, bride remembered about her choice of a salmon-colored, ankle-length satin dress for her 1932 wedding: “I could not in good conscience buy a fancy white dress that I would wear only once and then pack away in a trunk. The one I chose I could wear to dances later. I wore it a lot.”
“On August 15, 1880, Millie Priest, the daughter of Valentine Priest, who built and maintained the toll road over Priest Pass in the mountains west of Helena, married Clarence Goodell, the son of a Helena-area homesteader. Her headdress marks her as a bride, but she likely intended to wear the dress again. The practice of recycling wedding dresses was so common that Ladies Home Journal advised brides sewing wedding dresses to use plenty of fabric so “you will always be able to make it over into another style.”
WWI became the turning point in women’s fashion. Women turned from the traditional dress to dress more in tune with the fashion of the day. Dresses often embraced the shift. Dresses offered the brides the opportunity to live their fashion fantasies.
It was not until after World War II that church weddings with white-gowned brides became common. In the 1950s, “a booming economy and technological innovations—like the development of nylon (much more affordable than silk)—brought formal weddings formerly reserved for the upper class into reach for ordinary Americans.”
What does it mean that wedding traditions evolved over time and continue to do so? Simply that weddings, “while shaped by the desires of individual couples and families, also reflect larger cultural and historical circumstances. As such, they offer both good stories and new insights into the lives of our forebears. Wedding stories illuminate the lives of those who came before. And because weddings remain an important ritual today, a look at how they have been celebrated in the past also sheds reflective light on our own lives and choices.”
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