Tag: wedding

Summer Is Coming

The azaleas are in bloom!  So the dogwoods can’t be far behind.  Because I’ve been hermit-like in my hidey-hole too much this spring, I was surprised at all the beautiful color when trekking (ok, driving) through a wooded area yesterday.

I should not have been surprised.  My best friend and her husband are celebrating their anniversary today.  Don’t ask me which anniversary it is, though—the ’90s are all a blur.

Here’s the reason I should remember this is a beautiful time of year:  my friend had been a docent at the John Carlyle House in Old Town Alexandria and knew that’s where she wanted her reception.  It’s quite a popular site for wedding receptions, so the weekends fill up fast. Because of her docent status, she had preference and was first in line when registration opened.  The young couple behind her said they had scoped out Alexandria the  previous year to determine which weekend was the most colorful.  Turns out that happens to be the first weekend in May.  So, my friend snatched May 2nd from them.

And that’s the story of one of the most beautiful weddings ever.

Sadly, I have no pictures of the wedding.  My friend never got around to ordering any photos.  I do have one snapshot print of me, but I haven’t bothered trying to set up my scanner.  I suppose I could try taking a picture of it with my camera, but that’s too much work for right now.  Maybe later in the month I’ll get my act together.

And it’s a no-go for photos of the John Carlyle House.  The website won’t let me copy their photos.  And my work-around (to take a screenshot with my preferred graphics program) is a bust because I’ve yet to downloaded Paint Shop Pro to this computer.

The good news in all this is that perhaps I’ll have some pictures to share later in the month.

Ahead of Her Time

YOne silver spoon is engraved "MR." The other is engraved "MRS."esterday morning I set the alarm on my watch to 10:30 p.m.  When it went off last night, I’d forgotten what I’d set it for.  Short term memory?  Not so good.

Having not thought about today’s post, the possibility of forgetting to blog was very real.  Perhaps inspired by yesterday’s list of impressive relatives, I remembered thinking, as a young child, how fortunate I was to call these people family.  Which reminded me of a few other early childhood thoughts.

Having been born before “women’s lib,” I often wondered why single and married men were addressed as “Mister,” while single and married women were differentiated by “Miss” and “Mrs.” (When you think about it, “Mrs.” isn’t even a word.  “Missus” is just a phonetic representation of “Mrs.”  Seriously??)  [See Note 1]

I also knew that married men and women shared a last name, even though they were born with different surnames.  What was the most equitable way to resolve this dilemma?  The lawyer’s daughter in me (I was only 5 or 6 years old at the time) figured the county clerk’s office kept a record of marriages (which they do), and assigned the man’s last name to odd numbered couples and the woman’s to the even numbers.  Or vice versa.  Either was fair.

When I asked my mother the question, she seemed surprised and said, “You always take the man’s name.” I replied in horror, “That’s not fair!”  She seemed taken aback.  She  probably thought That’s my daughter, the trouble-maker.

I was indeed the black sheep of the family.  My mother was the oldest of four, my father the oldest of two, and my brother the oldest of two.   At dinner one evening, I told them no one understood me because none of them were “not the oldest.”  Mom said “That doesn’t make any difference.”  Ha!  Later research would prove her wrong.

[Note 1:  Etymology tells me “Mrs.” is the abbreviation for “mistress,” yet “mistress” has been defined as “kept woman of a married man”since the 15th century.]